More than a year after it was conceived as a groundbreaking response to Greece’s notoriously recalcitrant universities, a special campus police force has been officially deployed – with disappointing results.

The group of 1,000 officers was deployed to four of Greece’s more than 20 university campuses in September. In Athens and the second largest city, Thessaloniki, all were chosen because they had the highest levels of drug trafficking and petty crime.

“We didn’t see them,” said a professor at the Athens Polytechnic flatly.

Armed only with batons, the newly trained University Protection Commandos (OPPI) were used sparingly after protests by outraged groups of students – and under the protection of experienced riot police.

“The campus police showed up once, there was a riot and they withdrew,” said Sabina Kurrizi, a history student at Aristotelio University in Thessaloniki, who is also part of the initiative.

“The riot police are protecting the OPPI, which is supposed to be protecting us. It’s absurd,” she added.

Greek universities are chronically underfunded and notoriously disrupted by strikes, sit-ins and violence against students and staff.

Based on the latest figures, Greece spent just under US$4,100 per tertiary student in 2015, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, compared to an OECD average of more than US$15,600.

“One police commando guarding another police commando is surreal,” says Theodoros Tsairidis, chairman of the Thessaloniki Police Officers’ Union.

“Must be a world first,” he quipped to AFP.

Insufficient public spending on education has long been a problem in Greece.

In 2009, the year before the Greek economic crisis, the Ministry of Education’s annual budget was more than 7.2 billion euros ($6.9 billion). This year it’s less than five billion.

In 2020, the rector of the Athens University of Economics and Business was attacked in his office by a group of hooded youths who tied a sign reading “Solidarity for sit-ins” around his neck.

When the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came to power in 2019, it made law and order its top priority.

“Our government is determined to make the sense of security in (universities) a reality,” Citizen Protection Minister Takis Theodorikakos said this week after police raided the Athens Polytechnic in a raid against gangs.

More than 30 people have been arrested in one fell swoop in connection with three gangs turning part of a derelict college dorm into a hideout, police said.

The Polytechnic is another campus selected for OPPI deployment.

“Prevention is always preferable to repression,” Deputy Education Minister Angelos Syrigos told the Kathimerini daily on September 20.

“Having police nearby creates a sense of security and could avert violent incidents or damage,” he said.

But a police presence at universities in Greece is highly controversial. During the Greek dictatorship, police helped the army brutally crush a 1973 student uprising at Athens Polytechnic.

Further outrage was sparked this month when riot police fired tear gas during a student concert at the Aristotelio.

Aristotelio staffers said at a news conference this week that the presence of riot police is disrupting daily life on campus.

“This is an anarchic force creating a climate of fear. Classes cannot be held in a climate of fear,” electrochemistry professor Sotiris Sotiropoulos told reporters.

“It’s a risk to our physical and mental safety,” he said.

The reactions of the students are mixed.

“Yes, there have been cases of lawlessness, but now we have armored police vehicles on campus…many of my fellow students are afraid to walk around,” says Irini, 21, a biology student at Aristotelio.

But Artemis, a 22-year-old psychology student, says the university’s sprawling, park-like campus is dangerous at night.

“There is daily drug trafficking and frequent fights and stabbings. There’s also regular sit-ins and vandalism by people outside of the university,” she said.

“We can’t just let anyone come in and do whatever they want. Students have nothing to fear from increased security,” she argued.