Canada- A third-year University of Calgary student at the centre of a nude photo firestorm has pulled out of classes while the newspaper that published the image stands firm in its editorial decision.

The March 3 edition of the student-run Gauntlet issued no apologies for the picture of a nude dancer. Instead, it blamed the university’s students’ union for allowing scantily dressed men and women to perform on campus in the first place.

That has prompted administration to talk of censuring the paper, and campus clubs have launched a petition with an eye on withholding student fees from the paper.

Citing humiliation, philosophy major Honey Houston (not her real name) said she will finish the semester by correspondence.

“I can’t go back there,” Houston, 28, said Thursday. “There is a full, frontal nude picture of me in my school newspaper. It was a school where I felt safe, where I was judged on intelligence and where I felt equal. That’s been stripped from me.”

News editor Dale Miller said the Gauntlet was invited to cover the event and the decision to run the photo reflects Sexual Awareness Week.

“The show did shock the university and I covered it in the same fashion it was conducted,” he wrote. “To do any different would be an inaccurate representation of an event on campus. If there is one place in society that should be censorship-free, it is the university environment.”

In a editorial Thursday exploring the disappearance of stacks of newspapers, the weekly paper points to the students’ union, among others, as possible suspects. “If not the feminists, could it have been the students’ union, trying to cover their error in allowing the striptease to occur within their facility?”

Meanwhile, a university official said administration is considering censuring the newspaper, and the students’ union again called for an apology.

“We’re going to ask the SU to join us in censuring the Gauntlet,” said U of C spokesman Roman Cooney. “The most powerful statement we can make to the Gauntlet now is that the students and university agree the paper’s response avoids the larger issue.”

Cooney said he’s fielded numerous complaints from industry and business.

“This really undermines all the more important issues on campus,” he said.

Students’ union president Bryan West said that while the Gauntlet’s response is insufficient, he needs to discuss with his colleagues the next move for council and administration’s request for censure.

“I can’t make that decision unilaterally,” West said. “But I still feel the Gauntlet needs to apologize, especially to this student.”

Miller said the performers are not victims and the paper would not have run the photo had it been a private event.

But Houston said she feels like a victim and is disappointed the Gauntlet hasn’t apologized to her or the campus community for running her nude image.

The student said that although she works as an exotic dancer to pay for her education, she doesn’t deserve to be “maligned” in this way.

(Honey Houston is the woman’s stage name. The Herald agreed not to publish her real name.)

She recognizes some people might find it ironic that she was nude on stage on campus in front of an audience of her peers, yet she’s upset by the image in the paper.

“It’s not hard to understand,” said Houston, who is Miss Nude Canada 2005.

“At my work, no cameras are allowed, my privacy is respected and I feel protected,” she said. “This is objectification of women at its finest.”

She declined to say if there are plans to take action against the Gauntlet.

Houston said she’s particular about images published of her, including promotional material used for her career.

“I don’t do photos that I can’t show my mom and dad. And I can’t show my mom and dad this.”

The student will finish the semester by correspondence, with help from her professors and classmates, she said.

“I can’t go back there,” she said of the university campus. “It was the one place I could blend in and make an

intelligent contribution and not be known for my body. This was my college experience and it’s ruined.”

Meanwhile, the Campus Conservative Association is among several groups behind a petition that has garnered nearly 300 signatures.