Silvia, why did Monday go like this?
«There was a loss of control of the situation and a total loss of sanity on the part of the children of the institute, but not only of the children of the institute, because there were also many outsiders at the school. The situation got out of hand and gave rise to outbursts and acts of vandalism and destruction of the school, after the principal’s refusal to accept an occupation.”
The school representatives said that the group managing the occupation, of which you are part, had gone to the principal that morning to make proposals. Which?
«We brought him the demands of the occupation contained in the monster manifesto which concerned both structural problems within the school and critical issues of the Valditara reform. We went to him to seek a discussion, even though he had found the school doors barred, as had happened in the previous three years.”
Manganaro, he himself wrote in the letter sent to parents, did not consider your group representative of the students. Why?
«We considered ourselves representative of the students’ desire to occupy with respect to the school’s shortcomings, there was a desire for peaceful demonstration through an occupation and we expressed it to the principal. Our flyer was public and was disseminated among students and through all social media, even going beyond the walls of the school. We thus made known the motives of our occupation group which, however, was not linked to those who decided to damage the school. We did not incite anyone to do this damage.”
Why were you unable to block the most violent group?
«We had hypothetically thought of occupying the central block in the plan presented to the principal to carry out activities during the days of the occupation, with 27 people temporarily providing security. But the security was not able to organize itself to follow the people in the institute who we already knew could have reacted in a similar way, but not in the way in which the situation unfolded on Monday, and to follow the external people who took advantage of the discomfort and mess. And what’s more, the teachers didn’t intervene even though they saw what was happening. We were left to our own devices. We did everything we could to stop them, but we couldn’t.”
Did you in the occupation group enter school at that point?
«We went in to manage the situation, to help the people who were ill and had difficulty breathing due to the fire extinguishers in the midst of that mess. We did what we could.”
How are the relationships between students and professor/manager?
«Last year we tried a similar approach on employment, but it was denied to us by the principal because it was not organised. There was then talk of self-management, but when there were proposals for self-management they were rejected or deemed insufficient and therefore nothing was ever given to us. There is therefore no trust between students and the educational institution: we don’t trust them and they don’t trust us, and we end up in a stalemate in which no one gets what they want.”
Now what do you ask the school given the seriousness of what happened?
«To be listened to, to understand what happened in such a way as not to punish everyone indiscriminately. Inside the school the other day there were people who vandalized the premises and people like me who worked hard all day trying to help people, to fix the situation, to find an interview. We were all pointed out in the same way.”
Tags: instigated violence impossible stop rampage
