Editorial: Fears

University rectors who spoke to Ta Nea about the conditions that professors and students must endure are emitting a cry of desperation.

It is a defeat for any society for fear to dominate at what should be a temple of knowledge and free thought.

It is equally shameful for a government at one moment to call on university students and their “robust” student movements to assume the role of guards, and at the next moment to set up committees to solve the problem.

If in the first case the government is calling for vigilantism, in the second it is putting off a solution ad infinitum.

Yet, violence is here, as are the drug trade, robberies, thefts, and sexual assaults. They are present and must be confronted immediately, in accordance with the laws of the Greek state.

What is there to examine about how we must address the issue of drugs at universities? Do different laws apply to universities than for the rest of society?

With its passive stance toward illegality, the government and the competent minister are contributing to maintaining a climate of fear.

Fear is not permissible at universities, just because those in power are afraid of the reactions, of organised minorities, to any attempt to impose fundamental order and to establish a secure environment.

In order to fulfil its function, the academic must be able at long last to breathe freely.