So there hasn’t been a new Daily Cal in a while…

Anyway, let’s see what the big story is across the bay. Last Friday, the Stanford Daily reported on Playboy coming to town to interview girls and shoot a few photos. You see, the mag is preparing their annual “Girls of the Pac-10″ feature. But their search for hot models has been met with cold shoulders:

Playboy photographer Kim Mizuno will be leading the interviews on May 9 and 10, but so far student response has been lackluster.

“We haven’t even gotten a little bit of a response from Stanford yet, especially compared to the other schools like Berkeley,” Mizuno said.

The magazine placed an ad in the Daily Cal about two weeks ago. I was going to post about it at the time, but tastefulness prevailed. But now that the interviews are over and the Stanford Daily has already covered it, I thought I could go ahead. So why the lack of interest?

“Here there is a lot less emphasis on being pretty and I don’t think it’s as important,” Fuller said. “At other schools, like Arizona, that’s what they live for. People here have different values and have different priorities.”

Because here at Berkeley, being pretty is a priority.

“We’re hoping that the numbers will increase in the next couple of days,” he said. “A lot of times the girls wait until the last minute.”

If no one does apply, he said in jest, “We’re going to take [Stanford] off the Pac-10 and call it the Pac-9.”

Ouch. We’d sure miss them.

Luckily, private schools aren’t barred from implementing affirmative action:

Mizuno emphasized that those who apply from Stanford have even less reason to fear rejection.

“You have to realize with Stanford, since we haven’ t gotten too many responses, we really want them to succeed — so the door will be open even wider,” he said.

Well that was last Friday. In today’s issue, the editorial board gives its collective opinion; “Calling all Stanford Playboy models“:

We encourage all female students interested in becoming a Playboy model to interview with representatives from the men’s magazine.
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Many girls at this school care far more about their academics than they do about maintaining model looks — this is Stanford after all, not Barbizon. But that should not deter those girls who would like to take a shot at modeling for Playboy.
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Furthermore, Playboy is one of the most upstanding men’s magazines on the market, and it is equally famous for its literary value as for its pictures… So it can be argued that Playboy is more than naked pictures.

Maybe the Daily Cal could learn a few things from their Cardinal counterparts about taking stands on important issues…

In conclusion, this is just another chance for Cal to beat the pants off Stanford. But we must wait until October to see who prevails in the “Big Spread.”