Fury at Concordia captain’s panic management talk

A university professor is facing a disciplinary hearing after inviting the captain of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner to lecture students on emergency procedures.

Luigi Frati, the dean of Sapienza University in Rome, expressed anger at the professor’s decision to invite Francesco Schettino to give a seminar, calling it an “inappropriate and unworthy choice”.

Mr Frati said he was turning the matter over to an ethics committee.

Schettino is being tried for manslaughter, causing the shipwreck, and abandoning ship over the January 2012 capsize of the Concordia, in which 32 people died.

The university said in a statement that the fact Schettino was ordered back onto the ship during the evacuation of passengers “would be enough to brand the initiative as void of any academic purpose”. It also dismissed “pathetic excuses” offered by the professor, Vincenzo Mastronardi, when confronted by the dean.

Italy’s education minister called the news “disconcerting” while the prosecutor in Tuscany who is arguing for Schettino’s guilt expressed indignation also at reports that he had been awarded a diploma.

“What did the young people get out of this?” asked Francesco Verusio, according to Italian news agency ANSA. “I hope they made fun of him.”

The Florence daily, La Nazione, reported that Schettino gave a nearly two-hour lecture last month to criminal science masters candidates, including reference to panic management. Passengers have described a chaotic evacuation of the ship.

Schettino, through his lawyer, defended the seminar, saying it was “a technical intervention on the basis of my knowledge and professionalism acquired over many years of service”.