Policing inside Aristotle University reduces crime

A year after 471 undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University published a letter lamenting the level of delinquency inside its vast campus, a committee set up to discuss the issue concluded on Friday that the presence of police officers on the premises had reduced crime.

This was achieved by coordinating the relevant institutional bodies – the university, judicial authorities and the police – along with the intervention of police to stop drug trafficking.

“As long as we continue to differentiate between forms of violence, we cannot eliminate it in universities,” Aristotle rector Pericles Mitkas told Kathimerini on Friday.

“Aristotle University is a creative hub for tens of thousands of university and research students. We must help strengthen their work, as well as the work of all universities. Universities and violence are incompatible,” he added.