On the basis of the letter, which he sent via mass email, to his students, the Dean of the Law School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Panagiotis Glavinis, appeals for the immediate removal of the takeover, as there is a risk of losing the semester, the AUTH contacted him.
“Every battle, for whatever reason, must have some limits”, is the first thing Professor Glavinis will say, capturing the situation: “Here, at the Faculty of Law, we are in an unprecedented situation.
Never before have undergraduate students closed the doors to postgraduates, who have their own association.
This is a very cruel occupation, callous to their colleagues, who are suffering tremendous harm.
Worse still, it is a completely ‘inexpensive’ protest for the participants, based on a ‘we’ll do what we do and where it comes out’ logic. And we, unfortunately, are hostage to this situation.”
Given the made decision not to proceed with online examinations, the Faculty of Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki is currently in a deadlock due to the occupations.
The risk of losing the semester is immintent.
As the dean underlines, “we have made another appeals to the students, explaining that there is time to take the compulsory courses until the spring semester starts and possibly extend it for a while.”
Up to this point, students in this particular faculty have ‘caught up’ with taking their exams in person for a week.
“It was the first week because there was an earlier blockade. The blockade was ‘lifted’, by the students, but the next week it was the same again,” Dr. Glavinis explains.
Financial Times: Greek entrepreneur Haris Karonis & JP Morgan are involved in facing counterclaims
And under no circumstances can any collective body act in such a way… here the state, the legislature cannot violate individual rights and fundamental freedoms such as freedom of movement, freedom of use of a public building.
These are criminal offences! And this is our problem in law school: here we teach law, justice, and on the other hand we see this situation where a legal order has completely collapsed and tolerates this kind of thing.
A small group of students keeping almost 6,000 active students out of the building.
It should be noted that we are under the same location with the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Political Science and the Faculty of Economics.
At some point, this all has to end.
Regarding the size of this ‘group’, which excludes others from access to the law school building, the dean says that “the ratio of those who decide to occupy to those who are excluded from examinations and attendance is overwhelming.
At the moment, there are a few people inside the School as squatters – they are the so-called ‘Coordination’.
When assemblies are held, a couple of hundred or so of questionable, however, origin gather, according to information from our students. We do not know whether those who decide on the occupations are actually students.
Meanwhile, yesterday (Friday 16/2), they were at the building and were partying.
They drank ouzo and tsipouro from noon to night. The situation has hit red!”
The mass email, which the Dean of Law took the initiative to send to the students, was a last-ditch effort to ‘sound the alarm’ about the exams: ‘We have exhausted all efforts to dissuade the students, even for a week.
They need to understand how many classes of their fellow students are suffering unacceptable harm in this case.”
