VERY VALLEY

Spice network shoots video at college

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - An adult cable television network paid Pierce College $5,000 to use its baseball field for a racy promotional video, easing an economic crunch but raising questions about how far the school should go to raise money.

The Spice Digital Network, a subsidiary of Playboy Enterprises Inc., used the Joe Kelly baseball field for two days in early March to shoot the video that showed women and men in provocative attire.

"It's what I would call easy money," Pierce President Tom Oliver told the Los Angeles Daily News on Thursday. He said he received permission from the Los Angeles Community College District, which oversees the 18,000-student campus in suburban Woodland Hills.

He said there's a difference between photography and the nude models the campus uses in its art classes and pornography, which the campus does not allow.

"If we know they're going to do something that's pornographic, we would say no," Oliver said. "We have said no to a couple of shoots before. Photography is one thing, but when you get multiple people involved ... when you co-mingle people, that's not art."

Staff members of the campus newspaper, the Roundup, disagreed, noting the college houses a child development center with small children.

"We were really outraged by it," said Marti Zamorano, the paper's editor. "I'm a mom, and it really bothered me that they would do something like that. Other people found it degrading to women, especially since it's women's history month."

The newspaper published an editorial that said: "Yes, Pierce needs the money. However, how far are they willing to go and what's next?"

Spice spokesman Scott Barton described the video as "provocative, playful, sexy and fun."

"It was baseball-themed," he said. "There were two teams - nine women and nine men - playing baseball, who were provocatively dressed."

During filming, a tarp was used to cover the baseball field.

"It's a freedom-of-speech issue," said Diane Levine, an anthropology professor and secretary of the faculty senate. "All I saw was catering trucks and a very large beach ball-sized baseball. Everything else was closed off."

Renting campus facilities for television and film projects is common in the Los Angeles area. Pierce makes $50,000 to $75,000 a year in such rentals.