We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t want to come to work, we’re unprotected and scared
The professor was held by a group of students for three hours in her office at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki for failing 28% of the students.

The event took place last Friday when the professor, attached to the Department of Psychology of the Faculty of Philosophy, communicated the evaluation notes for the first semester. One in three students in her class had failed the subject. A group of students went to the teacher’s office and held her for three hours against her will. At first, “they asked me not to count the errors in the multiple-choice questions,” the teacher declared in statements to the Greek newspaper ‘Kathimeriní’. “We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t want to come to work, we’re unprotected and scared,” she adds.

The optional subject is one of the courses with the most students enrolled each year. However, as it is a subject in the last year, the students protested that the failure delayed obtaining the title.

Threats by students are not something new
For her part, Meri Kosmidou, head of the psychology department at this university, has declared in local media that it is not the first time that a group of students from that faculty have tried to impose their criteria by using violence towards teaching staff and other students. The board of directors of the faculty has also denounced that the teaching team receives daily pressure from some radical students about changes in the contents that have to enter the exams, the subjects that the subjects must include, the forms of evaluation , that is, questions that are purely academic and that concern deans and department heads.

According to a communiqué from the board in which it condemns the “kidnapping” of the teacher, it affirms that “all these events affect teaching, go against our labor rights and have negative consequences on the functioning of the department as well as on the psychology of the teachers”.

Investigation by the prosecution
The Thessaloniki prosecutor’s office has requested that a police investigation be carried out to investigate the facts and identify those allegedly responsible for the retention and threats to the teacher.

The students involved in this case face various disciplinary sanctions such as the prohibition to participate in examination sessions during one or several academic years, the suspension of up to 24 months of student status or the definitive expulsion from the faculty.