On the day of protests at the Polytechnic – marked by the activists’ attempt to enter the Rector’s office which was rejected by the police with truncheons -, a video opens the debate on the conduct of the team of bouncers hired by the university to counter the protests. During one of the two attempts to enter the offices by pro-Palestine students, a vigilante, according to the students, would have provoked them by making a gesture similar to the fascist salute, before being recaptured by officers nearby. An episode that triggered the response of anti-Israel university students who shouted: “Fascist, fascist” at the security guard.
But the news begins this morning, when nine students of pro-Palestine university collectives they chained themselves this morning. Thursday 13 June, at the entrance gates of the main office of Polytechnic of Turin, in Corso Duca degli Abruzzi. A Polytechnic professor chained himself together with the students. A gesture of solidarity by Massimo Zucchetti, full professor at PoliTo. Zucchetti had it in 2015 the nomination for the Nobel Prize in Physics. «Am I also a troublemaker of the social centers? An outsider, a stranger? -he shouted-Shame on you, if it wasn’t for the students the Polytechnic would make a terrible impression. This should be a university, it’s not an exam factory, it’s not a career factory. Take a stand, are you university professors or not?”
«Out of solidarity with the students I also chained myself to the gates. It is not a violent action and a non-violent action, like those Gandhi did, but a decisive one, because we don’t bother anyone except with our words”, explained Zucchetti.
«The Polytechnic needs to become a decent university, that is, many others like me express their opinion – continued the professor – I am with the students, I am in favor of a moderate action of convincing Israeli universities so that they join us in supporting the opposition to this invasion in Gaza.”
Clashes at the gates
In the same morning the students also attempted to reach the rector upon entering the university and overcoming security, resulting in pushes and bad words from both sides.
“We just want to talk to a person who hasn’t considered us for a month,” a student explains to the security staff. During the scuffle, a girl was pushed and fell to the ground and suffered abrasions to her arm and side. According to other versions, she instead burned herself with a smoke bomb but the dynamics of the accident are still to be reconstructed.
For a month, activists have been participating in the occupations of the three university buildings in the Piedmontese capital to ask for a halt to agreements between universities and institutions, Israeli universities and military companies. Also present on site is the Digos of the Turin Police Headquarters.
Late in the morning the young activists joined, chaining themselves to the gates, too Massimo Zucchettiprofessor of nuclear plants in the inter-university Peace Studies Committee and exponent of the No Tav movement. In 2022 Zucchetti was among the teachers who asked the Polytechnic to renounce the agreement with Frontex, the European agreement for the control of immigrants.
In the afternoon they intervened riot police. The policemen, positioned in front of the entrance to the offices, reacted with some truncheons to the crowd of students in the Rector’s office, amidst shoving and shouting.
