NEWSPAPERS featuring naked and semi-naked women will now be sold at Aberystwyth University Students’ Union shop after students voted overwhelmingly to revoke a blanket ban.

The result comes despite fears from campaigners to repeal the ‘Boobs are not News’ ban on the Daily Star and Sun newspapers at the union, that the organisation of the all-student vote was a “farce” and gave people only 11 days notice of the poll.

In the vote held on Friday, in which students were asked “should the Students’ Union Shop sell all newspapers, Yes/No?”, the ‘Yes’ campaign received 556 votes, while the ‘No’ campaign received 192 votes.

A spokesperson for the students’ union said that the result “means that the current ‘Boobs are not news’ policy will be revoked.”

“More information will be released shortly on what’s going to happen next,” the union added.

The controversial policy to ban newspapers with Page 3 girls was made in November 2013. It followed a temporary ban on the selling of the Daily Express in opposition to some of its editorial views on immigration.

The bans led a UK survey of higher education institutions to label the university “hostile to free speech”.

The ‘Boobs are not news’ policy says that Aberystwyth students’ union is “committed to equality, and therefore opposes sexism.”

“Newspapers with Page 3 content regularly place the successes of women in other areas, such as sport, in a significantly less preferential position in the newspaper compared to the women on Page 3.

“Newspapers with Page 3 type content are easily accessible outside the Union to those members who might wish to purchase them, and would remain so even with a

Union boycott.”

The union said it believed that Page 3 “presents women as unintelligent and passive”; “is fundamentally out dated and sexist”; “presents unrealistic images of what women?s bodies look like”; and “legitimise objectification of women and therefore contribute to a normalisation of sexual violence.”

Aberystwyth joined a clutch of university Students’ Unions to ban Page 3 newspapers - but Aberystwyth is believed to be the first to revoke the ban through a student vote.

Ieuan Joy, who kickstarted the campaign to have the policy revoked, said that he was “always confident of overturning the ban” and was “pleased” at the result but said that the organisation of the vote had been a “complete farce”.

“The way this vote has been organised though has been a complete farce,” he said. “The Students’ Union has given people, in general, 11 days notice.

“We knew in advance, because it was meant for the 25 February, but around 10 days before the vote the union changed the date because of the attention of the union leadership elections.

“Every time they have advertised it on social media they never mention the actual title of the vote. instead of “should the student union shop be allowed to sell all newspapers”; it was always advertised as a referendum on repealing the ‘boobs are not news’ motion.

“Even though I do not read these papers or believe in their views, banning newspapers from the students’ union is in effect censorship. Protest is the way forward, not censorship.

“The policy also gives very bad publicity to the students’ union as a whole."