NATIONAL COORDINATION OF 126 STUDENT UNIONS:Mass struggle against private universities, for exclusively public and free studies

On Saturday 16 December, the Panhellenic Meeting of the Students’ Struggle Front (MAS) was held at the University of Piraeus, with a record participation of 126 student unions, in a militant response to the bill that the government is preparing for the establishment of private universities. The country’s student unions coordinated their action plan against the all-out attack on their studies, degrees, and job prospects. It was pointed out that the government may have a majority in Parliament, but the students and their unions are the real majority in the universities, and  demand, as their slogan says, ‘Degrees that matter and free studies – Contemporary rights for the students!’

‘The militancy expressed in the discussion, the rich experience shared, the proposals for continuing the action, fill the hundreds of elected students who represented their unions with optimism and strength for the future. In the coming period, efforts will be made to spread the messages and the call of yesterday’s national coordination everywhere, so that every colleague is informed’, highlights the Executive Secretariat of MAS. In their speeches, the elected unionists drew on the rich experience of the activities developed by their student unions and warned the government that they would act decisively against the bill it was proposing, announcing that they would prepare General Assemblies, rallies, and occupations of faculties.

As MAS notes, ‘the discussion focused on how to organise the mass information of students about the upcoming bill, how to organise the collective discussion and the militant response together with the school students and the labour unions. At the same time, it was pointed out how the establishment of private universities will affect the various faculties and the working future of the graduates. Special mention was made of the rich daily militant and vanguard actions of the student unions for all the problems of the students, the course of the mass protests against the crime in Tempe, which was bound to happen, the way the unions expressed the students with their action plan, their slogans, the discussions among students of each year of studies, and the chosen forms of struggle. There was also an exchange of experiences about the initiatives of the student unions in the field of disciplines and culture, the way they work within the students, and the overalllife of students’.