Overwhelming result for ‘Yes’ campaign in newspaper referendum

Today there was a referendum as to whether to revoke the current “Boobs not News” policy, which previously banned a number of papers due to their content.

Ieuan Joy and the Students Against Censorship pressed for a referendum on the newspaper policy after the online magazine Spiked.com  published a report documenting the state of free expression at UK universities, in which Aberystwyth was slated.

Spiked…you need to update this

The results were an overwhelming victory for the Yes campaign, which got 556 votes, compared to 192 votes for the No campaign, and 7 abstentions, meaning that the “Boobs not News” policy will be revoked and the Student Union shop will be allowed to sell the previously banned papers. This amounts to nearly three quarters of the vote being for revoking the policy.

In response to this victory, Ieuan Joy says “I’m genuinely shocked and so happy at the result! Even with the organisational issues of the vote and the advertising of it we are happy that the students of Aberystwyth have spoken for free speech and a free press.”

However, not everyone is so happy with this result. Third Year Computer Science/Physics student Tom Field said: “Both sides have cause for concern in how this was dealt with by the SU – particularly that there seems to have been almost no opportunity for a No campaign. This could have raised the point that refusing to sell a publication in no way censors it or infringes on its freedom of speech: instead all we are saying is that it is 2016, and that selling publications that demean women, demeans us all.”