Main opposition PASOK-Movement for Change on Saturday accused the government of "dabbling in autocratic and ineffectual verbalism" in lieu of coming up with an actual plan for addressing the problem of violence in universities, in an announcement issued by the party's sector chief and secretary for education, Stefanos Parastatidis and Sokratis Katsikas.
"The education minister's long-anticipated announcements to the Conference of Rectors about violence in universities prove that there never has been nor will there ever be a concrete plan for dealing with the problem," they said.
The announcement pointed out that, in the past six years, the government had failed to supervise, coordinate or ask university authorities whether they have actually drawn up any kind of security plan, nor how this might be adapted to the operational planning of the Hellenic Police, "which, despite being aware of the problem, has no plan for preventative policing to avert violent incidents on campuses."
Instead of offering collaboration, support and planning, the government was instead trying to shunt responsibility onto university authorities, based on the self-governance that it had concertedly and obsessively sought to abolish, while adopting "piecemeal" measures for communication purposes that actually perpetuate the problems, the party added.
According to PASOK, the problem of violence in universities was "structural" and linked to the administrative model established by Education Minister Niki Kerameus, which differed significantly from those of most European universities and had a lesser degree of self-governance, with the ministry "micro-managing" even the smallest aspects of their operation.
It also noted that the various announcement of disciplinary and economic sanctions were contradictory and in some cases flouted fundamental principles of jurisprudence - such as the presumption of innocence - while serving only to satisfy ideological obsessions and to further polarise the atmosphere in universities.