Students Give The Porn Supremacy

The majority of students voted in favour of Thursday’s Union debate, agreeing that porn does a good public service.

The inclusion of names such as Shelley Lubben helped make this a hotly anticipated event at the Union, and over 600 students packed out the chamber and bar to see what the speakers had to say.

None of the speakers held anything back, with porn director Anna Span in particular launching a staunch defence of the industry against the claims of Lubben and her teammates, child psychologist Richard Woolfson and anti-porn activist Dr Gail Dines.

It was Span’s side that won too, with 231 ayes comfortably seeing off the 187 nos to suggest that Cambridge students do agree with what porn represents on the whole.

Speaking to The Tab, president Lauren Davidson was elated with how things had gone. She said: “I thought the debate was really successful. It was refreshing to see such a current issue in today’s society debated.

The chamber quickly filled up ready for the debate

The speakers had a great evening and I think the results showed that people were willing to think about the bigger picture – the porn industry’s place in society throughout the centuries.”

Almost two hundred abstentions did show a large amount of indecision in the chamber though, and 2nd year theologian Maddie Parsk suggested this could be down to the speakers going off topic.

She said: “I don’t think they really addressed the question of public service. The opposition didn’t need to show porn was bad – they just needed to prove it wasn’t good for society. It was still really interesting though.”

In the emergency debate beforehand, the House controversially ruled that it would in fact rather be at St John’s than at Oxford.