It’s been a week since the tragedy Tempe disaster and the death of 12 students in Thessaloniki affected all faculties and all levels of the university community.

“I will not forget this image as long as I live”

The image that the professor of the Department of Balkan Studies, Slavic and Oriental Studies at the University of Macedonia faced is typical. Alexandra Ioannidouwhen he entered a crowded auditorium on Friday afternoon to teach a compulsory course for freshmen. “I found them all standing with my arms crossed over my chest, heads bowed, and a moment’s silence observed. Without any prompting or presence from me, although I intended to offer it. I will not forget this image as long as I live.

Mrs. Ioannidou’s students had an additional reason to grieve, as one of the victims, 20-year-old Francesca Beza, was also a member of their faculty.. “I asked them one thing: that they be informed and react,” adds the professor.

“Fear permeated our entire generation”

OUR Nikolaos Naguliscandidate of technical sciences A.P.T. and a member of the Association for Research and Higher Education, in an interview with “K” says that “in the early days we looked in the ads for the names of our colleagues and students and, unfortunately, found a few. Over the next few days, we tried to say something, but even as we speak, it’s not easy at all. Sadness, anger, melancholy, a cocktail of emotions, from which come not words, but screams. We’re tired of hearing about the stationmaster’s mistake. If everything depends on human error, then tomorrow it will be usThis fear has permeated our entire generation. Then we, researchers working at the university, had a strong feeling of disappointment. The research we produce, automation, drones, AI algorithms, endless pilot scenarios and risk analyses, are trivial by a state that has steadily abandoned the “public domain”.

“We are experiencing a collective trauma”

Her feelings are the same Olympia Gaitanidugraduate student of the 5th year of law, that is, the school that they attended 23-year-old Kyprianos Papaioannou.

“I didn’t personally know the classmate we lost, but the loss affected all of us. The price paid by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was very high. For me, and this is not only my feeling, the crime that took place in Tempe was the result of shortcomings in the state apparatus. The university is flooded with photographs, poems, speeches of student associations. Yesterday the statue of Aristotle was symbolically covered with a black cloth. There are people around me who have lost friends and relatives in an accident. We are experiencing a collective trauma and trying to cope with it. In the marches we went to these days, we cried. I am originally from Larissa and I used to walk this route every two to three weeks., and usually the last one with this route. It is very easy to identify with the victims and their families, especially with us students. But beyond the sadness and mourning we feel, we are also outraged that these children have been lost unfairly.”

“They sent their child to school and we brought him back dead”

Dean of the Faculty of Law, AUTI, Panagiotis Glavinisfor its part stands on an obligation that he considers to exist towards the student’s familywho, he says, “his parents sent him to Thessaloniki to study, and we brought him back to them dead. His sister also studies in our city. We have mobilized as a school to show our support. Fellow lawyers will help support the family legally to claim the compensation they are entitled to. We also want to set up a scholarship so that a child from Cyprus can come and study at a law school.. They personally went to the exodus ceremony held yesterday in Cyprus, where a real sea of ​​u200bu200bpeople gathered. All these emotions are connected with the fact that this child was lost in a completely unfair way. While there is some mute resentment I felt among the people, I was particularly impressed that the coffin arrived at the church with a Greek flag.…”.

Every hour there is a new general assembly of students or some kind of department announcement, and two words seem to dominate the front yards and the departments: it is injustice and anger, for a trauma that no student is going to endure. forget, but neither of us should be in a hurry to close it.