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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 8, 1978)
September Playboy depicts UO students By MIKE LEE Of the Emerald “It was something you kinda fantasize about, I suppose," said Sonja Nelson with a cheerful voice. Playboy photographer David Chan interviewed 300 hopefuls like Nelson last fall when he was in Eugene looking for “The Girls of the Pac-10.” But only Nelson, Vicki Sponhauer, Anne Healy and Debra Williamson, all university students, were selected for pictor ial display in September's Playboy Magazine. They were paid $100 to $300 depending on their degree of nudity. How did Nelson go about turn ing her fantasy into reality? Back in December, Nelson and about 300 other women flocked to Chan’s souvenir-stocked motel room for a week of interviews and picture-taking “He just snapped a Polaroid and then that was it,” she explained. “I didn’t hear from him until March.” Chan spent the months in be tween sorting out the results at Playboy’s Chicago offices. “And then in March,” continued Nelson, “I got a telephone call from the office in California. (The secre tary) called and said ‘Would you ■T bistro • cafe • TAVERNA • restaurant • kafeneion • TAVERNA poppg greek peasant food “outside seating’ 675 E. 13th 343-0846 8:00 am-10:30 pm closed Tuesday ATTENTION TEACHERS AND PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS If you need the University of Oregon’s recommendation for an Oregon teaching certificate based on Summer 1978 and/or prior academic work, please pick up the application packets now — Office of Teacher Certification. Room 102 — College of Education Home Grown Shoppe Exotic Plants Grow Lights Soils. Books and a wide selection of pots and baskets Cut flowers, arrangements, corsages VISA 11th 6 Alder 344 4030 Behind the jungle mural Mon.-Thurs. 10-5:30 Fri. 6 Sat. 10-6:00 Sun. 12-5:00 Page 8 like to do it?’ and I said ‘sure.’ ” “Well, not as quickly as that,” she added. “It took some thought. It wasn’t something you jump right into, because it is a national magazine.” During the winter, the Pacific-8 Conference expanded into the Pacific-10, necessitating an Arizona visit for Chan. Finding the work too much for one person to handle, Playboy dispatched three more photographers to the Coast to help out. Arny Freytag, a make-up women and Eddie-the assistant came to Eugene over Spring Break to do the final photo graphy. “It started early in the morning,” said Nelson of her session. “They had to rent the place where they took the indoor pictures.” When she arrived, “they had some clothes and stuff for me” to try on while Eddie-the-assistant set up the lights. “It was great,” Nelson recalled. “He (Freytag) would come and tell me how to set-up a pose. Mostly I just did what I wanted to do except for he’d say ‘move your knee’ or ‘lift your arm higher’ — just small things.” For the one picture in the magazine they spent “all day — just roll after roll after roll” of film, she said. She didn’t worry about the type of pictures they would take. “I’m an art student,” said Nelson. “Half my classes were drawing nude models at school. It didn’t seem like that much of a big deal. It’s not like —” exploitation? “No, I don’t think so at all. I’ve always thought Playboy was very tasteful. It’s not like Hustler. I couldn’t see doing anything like that, or even Pent house.” The topic of her modeling hasn’t exactly dominated her conversa tions. "It’s not something that I just talk about a whole lot — Oh, guess what I did today...’ ” she mimicked. ‘‘The session was several months ago. There was a long span in between where you’re just kinda waiting,” she said. “Now is probably the most that I've talked to anybody about it, now that the issue’s out.” The conversations invariably lead up to one question. “ ‘Why?’ That’s what everybody wants to know,” said Nelson. She paused, pondered the thought. "It was really exciting, it was really a big ego-trip. I know that he inter viewed over 300 girls from Eugene — they only picked four.” TV study finds viewers dissatisfied with programs By TODD ADAMS Of the Emerald Few people actively oppose vio lence on television and American consumers dissatisfied with tele vision programming don’t rate vio lence as the primary reason, ac cording to a recent study done at the University of Oregon. That is why Americans will con tinue to view violence on televi sion, unless a small number of people opposed to violence on television can convince consum ers to change their minds. Jerry Medler, an associate pro fessor of political science, and Deanna Robinson, assistant pro fessor of speech, conducted the study in cooperation with Bissy Genova, a professor in the School of Information Studies at Syra cuse University, New York. "The major motivation behind the study was a curiosity and a suspicion,” says Medler. “We saw an incongruity between TV ratings and the promotional propaganda of a coalition of anti-violence groups.” According to Medler, if violence on television is a source of major concern, then why are some of the more violent shows on television ranked high in the ratings? In hopes of pointing out this in congruity, Medler and Robinson set out to sample the American consumer in the Eugene Springfield vicinity. “We conducted interviews in the late spring of 1977,” says Med ler. “This was at the height of the publicity about TV violence.” A random telephone book sam pling was taken of 149 Eugene Springfield residents, then a follow-up sampling was con ducted among 126 Syracuse high school teachers with the help of Genova. “We wondered if our findings were particular to the Eugene area only, so we went 3,000 miles away (to Syracuse) and picked a homogeneous group of high school teachers,” says Meddler. According to Robinson, who had done some previous work with Genova, high school teachers were selected because of their probable knowledge of the TV violence campaigns and be cause of their similar income bracket and educational back ground. “The only major weakness with the sampling was its size, which means that the findings we arrived at have a larger potential margin of error than would a larger sam pling,” says Medler. Designed after the model of political economist Albert Hirsh man, five distinct consumer viewing categories were drawn from the sampling’s results, an in novative idea, according to Med ler, because television has never been thought of as a consumable product. The five consumer viewing categories are: (1) people who don’t like TV programming; (2) people who cannot think of any way to express discontent with programming; (3) people who knew ways to express their view, but who didn't; (4) people actively expressing a view, and (5) people who accept programming as it is. Combining the results of the Eugene and Syracuse studies the researchers found that these same five consumer viewing categories could be applied to both studies despite the fact Eugene was a random study and Syracuse was a homogeneous study of a class of people. In addition, approximately the same percentage of viewers could be found in each of the five categories for both studies. For example, only 14 percent of the viewers in the Eugene study were people actively expressing an opinion about television pro gramming. The Syracuse study figure was 17 percent. Both studies required people to answer a series of 49 questions, and among those who said they disliked television viewing, the majority said violence was not a primary reason for their dislike. Even those viewers classed as active protestors of TV violence were reluctant to endorse at tempts at curbing violence by prior censorship. An article on the study is ex pected to appear soon in an issue of “Communication Research,” a professional journal of journalism, speech and public opinion. Tuesday, August 8, 1978
