On October 22, 2003, Odysseas Tsenai stepped aside for the second time. He was the top student at his lyceum in Thessalo...

On October 22, 2003, Odysseas Tsenai stepped aside for the second time. He was the top student at his lyceum in Thessaloniki, but a parents' association resolution and a school occupation by classmates made it clear he wasn't welcome to carry the Greek flag in the October 28 parade. Tsenai was born in Albania. That was enough for many. Three years earlier, in October 2000, the same thing had happened in Nea Michaniona, a town near Thessaloniki founded in 1923 by Asia Minor refugees. He was 15, in his third year of gymnasium, with grades of 19.7 and 20 in consecutive years, and due to lead the parade as flag-bearer. Residents spray-painted "Greek, the flag belongs to you" on a wall and put up banners. He withdrew, as he put it, "for the good of society." President Kostis Stephanopoulos called the public reaction "laughable," saying any child who participates in Greek education and excels "certainly becomes Greek in the broader sense." PASOK MP Theodoros Pangalos demanded Tsenai be granted Greek citizenship within 24 hours. Classmates asked publicly whose side he would take in a war. In 2001, Tsenai was baptised a Christian. In 2003, top of his class again, he was chosen again, and the cycle repeated. Students occupied the school on October 21. He withdrew the next day, and the occupation ended. He did not stay in Greece. He passed into the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Polytechnic School among the highest scorers, then left on scholarship to Boston College. By 2009 he was at Harvard for doctoral studies. He trained in pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and later became an assistant professor of pathology at NYU Langone Health. He now works as a pathologist in New York. He told Eleftherotypia years later that leaving Greece was the right call. "If I had stayed," he said, "this story with the flag would have haunted me forever. Maybe it even helped me strengthen my character." #OxiDay #Greece #History