Catanzaro – In the square to say no to a second Faculty of Medicine in Calabria after the one that has been active for decades at the Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro. This is the message launched this morning during the event held in a square in the Lido district of the regional capital. Some of the demonstrators exhibited a coffin with a poster announcing the death of the University of Catania. A few weeks ago, Valerio Donato, already a candidate for mayor in June, today a municipal councilor of opposition and among other things, full professor of private law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Catanzaro.
The alarm raised by Donato – present at today’s initiative together with, among others, the mayor Nicola Fiorita, the regional councilor Pd Ernesto Alecci, the citizen secretary of the democrats Fabio Celia – was picked up in a bipartisan way by the Catanzaro politics, resounding but also well beyond the city limits. The situation was also heated up by the recent statements by the President of the Region Roberto Occhiuto, who on the sidelines of a meeting on health issues in Catanzaro, saying no to “bell tower wars”, said that the University of Catanzaro “should be strengthened and not weakened. , but if there are other experiences in the region, it is necessary to evaluate the opportunity to implement these initiatives as well. ”Many, not only in Catanzaro, have seen in this joke of Occhiuto, who is from Cosenza, a substantial” opening “to possibility of a second Faculty of Medicine in Calabria. The rector of the University of Catanzaro, Giovambattista De Sarro, indirectly replied to the governor: “In my opinion it is not a good choice, things must be done adequately because we cannot train doctors not up to par. Catanzaro has a 45-year history of medicine. I would think about it to avoid doing something that will be of no use to anyone tomorrow, ”said De Sarro. But the debate has now taken hold, inducing the president of the Municipal Council of Catanzaro, Gianmichele Bosco, under the pressure of the group leaders, to announce a session of the civic council of the capital dedicated ad hoc to the theme of the university, to which the same will be invited Occhiuto and the academic leaders, and the mayor Nicola Fiorita (in turn a professor at the University of Calabria) to ask for the contribution of his electoral competitors for a “joint motion” aimed at maintaining the only Faculty of Medicine in Calabria in Catanzaro.
Donato: “No to gang wars”
“The Universities of Catanzaro and Cosenza – Valerio Donato reconstructed – have stipulated an agreement for the development of a digital medicine course, at this moment Unical would like to establish an autonomous course, but always of digital medicine. This says a lot about the inability of an initiative of this kind to bring new elements to the Calabrian university system, that is, it adds nothing but makes a course autonomous that obviously wants to be used to establish, in the immediately following step, a medical faculty. It is a tactical mechanism that has now been revealed that does not propose a systemic reasoning and instead expresses a more markedly parochial vision that the University of Cosenza wants to affirm. Obviously nothing detracting from the prestige and authority of both the University of Cosenza and the other Calabrian university institutions that must be implemented and enhanced with the support of the whole territory. What must not happen are gang wars ”.
Fiorita: “Occhiuto welcome the invitation to the City Council”
Mayor Fiorita said: “It seems to me very important to be at this event organized by some citizens because this event demonstrates the attention of the city on a theme that concerns the future of the city and accompanies other initiatives that we are taking”.
“In recent days – recalled Fiorita – I asked the other mayoral candidates present in the City Council to prepare a motion together, because I believe that this issue must be addressed in a unified manner and must also be addressed from an institutional and systemic perspective. So I hope that the president of the Occhiuto Region accepts the invitation addressed to him by the president of the Municipal Council Bosco to participate in the open municipal council: there – argued the mayor – we will present a joint motion for the city, which asks not only the protection of the rights and prerogatives of Catanzaro but above all it asks and will ask that the question of the development of the Calabrian university be addressed from a system perspective, without escaping forward and without prevarication of one side over the other. We must make the university work throughout the region: years ago a path was chosen, which is to focus on a system based on different universities, and each of these universities must be enabled to strengthen and respond to needs of Calabria “. Fiorita then observed: “I believe that such an important issue must be addressed in an institutional way, and that the request of all group leaders goes in this direction. It takes a debate in institutional settings and an evaluation of the pros and cons of each choice. There can be no forward escapes. It is not a question of the regional capital, it is a question of the region, it is a question of Calabria. If – concluded the mayor of Catanzaro – we unbalance the development of the university system and do not keep it within an overall logic, we do harm to the whole region: this is what we must make clear, this is the real question. Nobody wants to take anything away from the University of Calabria, nobody wants something special for Catanzaro. We believe that there must be a clear strategy for the overall development of the Calabrian university system ”.
Bruno Mirante