In late March, Playboy magazine paraded through two of the state’s college towns — Auburn and Tuscaloosa — offering open auditions for its 2007 Girls of the Southeastern Conference issue, set for release in October.
It was the first time in several years that Playboy held auditions at Auburn University (AU) and the University of Alabama (UA).
And with the exception of a few splashy headlines and photos in local and campus newspapers, the event passed without fanfare, according to Nate Young, Baptist campus minister for UA.
"They just kind of swooped in and swooped out unnoticed," he said.
Young noted that he received materials from a contact at Mississippi State University in Starkville that could have been used to petition to keep the magazine from coming on campus, but because the university had already denied the Playboy auditions access to campus, such steps weren’t needed.
"The university stayed kind of neutral on the whole thing," Young said.
About 30 girls showed up for Tuscaloosa’s auditions, which were held in a local hotel.
Twenty-two girls also auditioned in Auburn at a hotel owned, but not managed, by the university a week before the Tuscaloosa photo shoot.
Stephen Thompson, senior campus minister with Baptist Campus Ministries at AU, said he received the same petition Young did and made copies of it available, but similarly nothing ever materialized from it.
"Nobody gave it much attention," he said. (TAB)
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