A senior official at the University of Bari in southern Italy is in police custody after demanding sexual favours in return for the answers to an entrance exam. Giuseppe Specchia, the co-ordinator of the university's public relations office, was caught on tape giving a journalist with La Repubblica newspaper, posing as a university applicant, the answers for the examination, then saying to her, "Tell me, what do you want to do for me [in return]?
After Mr Specchia's arrest on Wednesday, three more university officials, including the secretary of the administrative faculty, were arrested on suspicion of providing him with the exam answers. The university rector, Giovanni Girone, has announced an inquiry. This is at least the fourth such scandal to hit Italian universities in recent years. At the University of Camerino, in Marche, a professor was videotaped selling exam results in exchange for sex in January last year.
The Bari scandal - which involves admission papers for heavily oversubscribed courses in communication sciences and the science and technology of psychology - was exposed after a student took her complaint about Mr Specchia's sexual advances to La Repubblica. She recounted how an official called Pino - Mr Specchia's nickname - had drawn her into a secluded corner of the university public relations office.
He asked me about my boyfriend, he told me that he could ensure that I passed. And then he touched me. I didn't want to lay eyes on him ever again. And then this was the university, I couldn't bear to start in this way.
My whole future was at stake. Questioned by an investigating magistrate and the carabinieri who arrested him, Mr Specchia is reported to have confessed up to a point, blaming an environment of "cosi fanno tutti", in which corruption is universal. He claimed he had only obtained the exam answers to enable his son and his son's girlfriend to gain places.
