Students flock to debate the rights and wrongs of Page 3

The "no more Page 3" campaign continues apace, with the Girls Brigade having followed the Girl Guides by announcing its support on Friday, which happened to be the International Day of The Girl.

Students at a range of universities across Britain have voted to urge campus shops to stop selling The Sun until it stops running pictures of topless women on Page 3.

They include LSE, UCL, Manchester Met, Manchester university, Chester, Abertay (Dundee), Dundee university, Edinburgh, Stirling, Cardiff, Durham, Sheffield, Newcastle, Essex, Cambridge, Brasenose College, St Hugh's College, New College, University College and Teddy Hall Oxford.

University debates on the subject are becoming common. Students in Glasgow staged a debate on Page 3 and lads mags while students in Manchester debated whether porn empowers women.

"No more Page 3" representatives have addressed debates in the universities of Sheffield and Warwick. But they are conscious to avoid backing a ban.

The campaign's founder, Lucy Holmes, attended a packed debate at University College London a couple of weeks ago in which the motion called for a ban on Page 3. She was given the opportunity to explain that she and her supporters are not seeking a ban.

They want The Sun's editor, David Dinsmore, to stop publishing the pictures of his own volition.

Holmes's view undoubtedly had an effect on the resulting vote in which the abstentionists won.

As I write, the no-more-Page 3 petition on change.org has managed to attract more than 120,000 signatories. And I note that a counter campaign, also on change.org, "Keep Page 3 in The Sun", has secured 3,250 names.

And before anyone else points it out, the latest circulation figure for The Sun shows that it sold an average of 2,213,084 copies a day in September.

- theguardian.com