A swimsuit calendar featuring ASU female students will be sold on campus next week, the two MBA students behind the publication said.
Malcolm McLeod and Chris Clark formed M & C Publishing and Production in October for the purpose of putting together the calendar. The two held tryouts at Scottsdale nightclub Axis/Radius to recruit calendar girls.
The calendar, "Arizona College Girls: Featuring Girls of ASU," had a startup capital of more than $10,000 and will be sold on campus for $9.95.
"We had talked about resources," Clark said. "A lot of the resources at ASU are the girls. We wanted to find a way to harness the resources."
The new calendar is reminiscent of "Campus Man," a movie filmed at ASU in the mid-1980s, in which a student played by John Dye needs to find $10,000 in order to afford tuition. The student decides to put together a calendar of male student athletes, called "Men of ASU," with a startup capital of $12,000, and sells the $5 calendar at swim meets and in the ASU Bookstore.
Despite the similarities, McLeod and Clark said they were not inspired by the movie and did not know it existed.
"Campus Man" differs from the new calendar in one important way, Clark said, "Our goal wasn't to make a profit; it was to show we could put out a quality product."
Eleven of the 12 girls featured in the calendar are ASU students; one recently moved to Arizona and has not started school yet.
Broadcasting senior Jill Anenberg was among more than 30 girls who auditioned at a tryout session at Axis/Radius in October. She now appears on the September page of the calendar.
"I'm a personal trainer, and I'm into fitness," she said. "I thought it would be something fun and challenging to do.
"Prior to doing the shoot, I asked a bunch of questions to make sure that I wasn't going to be in the next Paris Hilton video," Anenberg added.
Her parents had mixed feelings about her being involved in the calendar, but when they heard that it was legitimate, they supported her, she said. "My parents were excited, and my mom told me to 'work it.'"
Anenberg said the calendar should not affect the University's goal of moving away from a party-school image.
"Obviously, if we were party girls, we'd have beer bellies, but we don't," she said. "Not only are we proving that myth wrong, but we're showing that we're smart girls."
Kinesiology freshman Ashley Surgenor and her sister Amber, a family and human development junior, also appear in the calendar. They will be featured on the October and November pages, respectively.
"ASU is also known not just for the parties but for the beautiful girls, and so I think it positively affects ASU because it'll get more people to want to come here," Ashley Surgenor said. "It's a beautiful state with beautiful people."
The calendar already has captured attention from an ASU attorney, but not for the scantily clad female students who appear in the publication.
Quarles & Brady Streich Lang LLP, a Phoenix-based law firm, has been representing ASU for more than a decade and sent a legal notice to the publishing company in late October.
"What we had said to them is that they cannot use the trademarks of Arizona State University," said Glenn Bacal, who is representing the University in this matter.
"We are in discussions with them, and we are hopeful that the matter is being resolved in a manner that is protective of the Arizona State University trademarks," he said.
Clark said that he and McLeod had changed the name of the calendar from "Girls of ASU" so that they would not violate any trademark laws.
Reach the reporter at michael.miklofsky@asu.edu.
