Playboy's View of the Green

Four months after Playboy magazine caused a stir on campus by interviewing students for its "Women of the Ivy League" edition, the issue came out this fall without much of a fuss in Hanover. But it aroused some interest in other parts of the country.

"I got about 20 letters and e-mail messages from all over the U.S.," said Shannon Smith '96, who was the more revealing of the two Dartmouth students featured in the pictorial. All but one of the 20 notes were from men who wanted to go out with her. '"I want to see you sometime, I live in Florida,'" was a typical response, Smith said. "Most gave me their stats: 'I'm six-one, 200 pounds, I have black hair, etc.'" While Smith said she was flattered by the attention, she noted that she has a boyfriend. "I'm not going to go out and start dating," she said. The other student to pose, Xantha Bruso '97, heard from 15 prospective dates on her answering machine. (She declined.)

In May, when Playboywas interviewing 12 prospective models in the Hanover Inn, about 30 students protested outside, drawing a couple of male hecklers. But this fall, students who saw the magazine seemed to think it wasn't that big a deal. "It wasn't really worth the fuss," said Megan Spence '98. Angela Scott, also a '98, said she does not like the prospect that outsiders might see the women as representatives of Dartmouth College, but she stressed that it was the students' right to pose.

Playboy photographer David Mecey had hoped that more would have exercised that right. "I'd expect to get 35 to 50 responses from a school this size," he told Shutterbug magazine.

Yet the magazine sold briskly in Hanover. At the Dartmouth Bookstore, 58 copies were sold in S eptember—nearly quadruple the normal pace, said Terry Walz, the periodicals manager.

Dartmouth womenhad a relativelymodest showing inthe October"Women of theIvy League"issue ofPlayboy.