Club sells Pitt women calendar

Posing in a bikini is nothing new for senior Alison Irwin. She has participated in several… Posing in a bikini is nothing new for senior Alison Irwin. She has participated in several beauty pageants and is a member of Pitt’s dance team. But she has never been seen in a bikini on top of the Panther statue outside of Heinz Field. Until now.

“I kept sliding off,” she said, laughing. “Cars were slowing down to watch. We counted one car that went around the block three times.”

Irwin, along with 12 other female students, was photographed on campus and in various parts of the city for the “2002-2003 Women of Pitt Calendar” created by the University Society for the Finer Things, a student organization of approximately 30 members who aim to educate students about scotch, wine and cigars – the “finer things” in life.

The calendar went on sale Tuesday outside the William Pitt Union for $12. Local sponsors such as Peter’s Pub and Lefty’s Tattoo Parlor contributed to the calendar’s production, done by Raff Printing Co. in the South Side.

The project began last school year as a fund-raising idea, said Nick Pawlenko, the organization’s vice president.

“First we thought about making a ‘Bums of Oakland Calendar,’ but we decided a swimsuit calendar would be better received,” Pawlenko said.

University officials hesitated to approve the project, Pawlenko said, but didn’t prohibit the organization from proceeding.

“They didn’t give us a full red light or a full green light,” he said. “They basically wished us luck, so we proceeded with caution.”

The calendar was intended to be a diverse representation of women at Pitt, society member Joe Tosi said. It was meant to be in good taste, and he feels it was.

“The society is not about putting photos on walls,” Tosi said. “The calendar is a fund-raiser for our club. It’s meant to bring awareness to our organization and help the society expand.”

The photographs are of female students posing in bathing suits near Pitt and city icons, such as the flowerbeds of Phipps Conservatory, the Cathedral of Learning fountain and the Heinz Field entrance. Important dates, such as class scheduling information, school recesses and football games, are noted on the calendar.

Pawlenko said “blanket e-mails and fliers” were distributed last March to “almost all campus organizations” in an effort to recruit models. The response, he said, was surprising.

“We received about 50 immediate responses,” Pawlenko said. “Then we began narrowing down.”

The condensing process began in April, recalled Irwin, with two biographical interviews, the second before a panel of judges.

“They asked mostly biographical information, like what we did in our spare time, what we did on campus and for fun, things like that,” she said. “After the second interview, they called back and told me I was chosen.”

Pawlenko said they had their finalists confirmed before the end of last school year, with photo shoots set to begin during the summer. The calendar was originally set to have 15 women within its pages, with nine solo photos and three double photos. But Pawlenko said unforeseen complications caused the initial format to change.

“Many of the girls left town for the summer, and two of the 15 girls dropped out because travel arrangements couldn’t be made,” he said. The calendar now has nine solo shots and two double shots.

The panel of judges, consisting of five students, two of whom were women, looked for candidates with several extracurricular activities, Tosi said. Irwin, active on campus and working at Magee-Womens Hospital and St. Margaret’s Hospital in Waterworks, fit the bill, as did Rachel Peters, a 20-year-old junior.

Peters, the chief financial officer for Women in Business, a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and Alpha Kappa Psi sorority, said she was hesitant at first, but each woman had a great deal of input into their own photo shoots, which eased her nerves a bit.

“It was a cooperative effort,” she said. “They made us as comfortable as possible. We decided what to wear, where we wanted to be shot and how to pose. We were the first ones to see the prints and we got to choose which photos we liked best.”

The calendar was criticized early in its planning stages, causing Christopher Weber, president of the society, to issue a written statement on the club’s Web site.

“There has been a lot of concern by University officials about the nature of our ‘2002-2003 Women of Pitt Calendar,'” the statement read. “On behalf of my executive board, I would like to assure those with concern that everything in the calendar will be kept within the borders of good taste. After all, that is exactly the image that our organization works hard to represent.”

Peters had an idea to balance the score.

“I don’t think it would be a bad idea to have a male student calendar,” she said. “It was done with a lot of consciousness and the pictures are not trashy at all, so there’s no reason males couldn’t do the same type of thing.”

The society plans to sell the calendar one or two days each week and hopes to sell the first thousand calendars quickly, Tosi said. He said most of the money generated from the calendars will go toward expanding the society.

“We’ll give 10 percent of the proceeds to a charity,” he said, “but we have yet to decide which one. Other revenue will go towards future meetings and society events.”