Athens Polytechnic’s graffiti-covered campus
By Brillian Bao
ATHENS — Athens Polytechnic university looms large in this European capital. Though its central campus spans just three and a half blocks, it is widely known as the site of a massive 1973 uprising against the military dictatorship that then ruled Greece, and as the current base where anarchists take shelter from police, who are forbidden from entering its grounds.
Now, it appears the central campus of the iconic institution could be in danger of closing for good.
Polytechnic has nine academic schools, and eight have already been moved two and a half miles away to Zografou. New Democracy party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is projected to win the upcoming July 7 national election, has said he favors closing the Patision Complex to expand the nearby National Archeological Museum. His nephew Kostas Bakoyannis, who this month was elected as Athens’ mayor, agrees.
“The idea is that it will upgrade the area around it,” said Alexis Papahelas, a Greek investigative journalist and the executive editor of a leading newspaper here, Kathimerini. “I am sure this will be a huge battle of resistance.”
According to the architecture school’s website, 1439 undergraduate students, 220 post-graduate students, and 177 PhD candidates currently attend the university. Azte Clare, one of the university’s students, confirmed that the relocation plan has already sparked heated debate.
“Architects say we should stay in this historical space,” Clare said. In 2012, the Averoff Building, located in the center of the Patision Complex, was named a Grand Prix winner of a European Union prize for cultural heritage. The building is notably the only one on campus that does not appear to be vandalized — in 2013, more than 35 volunteers cleaned its exterior and applied anti-graffiti coating to prevent future vandalism.
Clare was reluctant to give an opinion on the issue.
“It is a center of culture, but it is also a little controversial,” she said.
Much of the controversy around the Patision Complex stems from the presence of anarchists who have sought refuge from police within Polytechnic’s gates. Under Law 1268/82, which establishes university asylum, police and other officials are unable to step foot on campus except under extreme circumstances, such as flagrant felonies or flagrant crimes committed against human life. Last October, Mitsotakis pledged that if he is elected he will suspend the law, which was passed in 1982 following the violent suppression of a student rebellion at Polytechnic against the military dictatorship at the time. Such a suspension would not be without precedent: the law was briefly suspended in 1985, 1991, and 1995, and scrapped completely between 2011 and 2017.
“We want universities where students and teachers do not feel fear; universities that we are not ashamed of,” Mitsotakis said in a speech covered by the Greek Reporter. “I pledge that no space will be occupied (by criminal elements) in our public universities.”
