The story Behind The Calendar

The aim of Notorious Productions is to provide entertainment to young adults. We’ve done everything from themed parties, party buses, concerts, and fundraisers for the Whatcom County Boys & Girls Club. A friend and now business partner, Andy Karuza came to me with the idea to do a Swimsuit Calendar. Andy is a student at WWU and is currently doing event planning and promotion for Notorious Productions. I thought his idea was a great idea and opportunity to use what I’ve learned in marketing classes and connections with photographers and graphic designers to develop a product and market it to college students. At the time I just brought on an intern Matt Golden to help me with my other promotions projects for the quarter. We were getting ready for a fashion show and a sunset cruise around Bellingham Bay to raise money for the boys and girls club, so we had a full plate already. Two of my good friends Chris Taylor and Ramil Azucena were the key to getting the project done and making it look phenomenal. Ramil Azucena is now a graduate WWU’s graphic design program and works for Jeepney Clothing company. Chris Taylor is now a graduate of WWU’s Journalism program, he was the photographer for the school’s paper. Chris is currently a photographer for the Seattle Times. So that’s the team. Now that we had a solid team we recruited amongst our circle of friends for models. To date the models have not been paid, they volunteered, once the calendar is profitable I plan to pay them or do something special for them. Chris Taylor and I chose the locations and themes of each shoot. We wanted to incorporate several elements in each shot. We wanted the calendar to show Bellingham and WWU. We also wanted to incorporate what the girls where into for instance we have Megan playing volleyball and Ally riding her motorcycle. We did all the shoots in 2 weekends. We had to work with the weather, which actually worked out well. For instance Shannon’s rainy shot was a last minute decision and turned out awesome. We wanted to have the calendars to sell at our June 2nd Fashion show. Also we were working with a very small budget. I had to raise additional capital than what I can provide amongst my roommates, who loaned over $3000! In order to save money and get the calendars in time, I flew down to L.A where they were printed and pick up two of the 7 boxes (the others were shipped standard). My step mom is a flight attendant for United, so I get free flights, which was nice. Since then we’ve been selling them online and we were selling them on campus at “Vendors Row.” Vendors row is a designated area on campus for companies to sell their goods. Vendors sell everything from hot dogs to jewelry to beanies. Last spring we sold the calendars on campus for about 2 weeks, school was released and then we sold them at events and online. Once school started back up we sold calendars on campus Oct 3rd and 4th. I then received a call from Jim Schuesler stating that due to some complaints they had received I could no longer sell the calendar on campus. Jim said that the calendar violated the schools mission statement. When I asked him what it was he told me I could “look it up.” I tried to present my case which Jim was having no part of. My case is that we’re not just because a few people complain you can’t ban the calendar. It’s funny that at the same time they banned the calendar it was banned book month at the Library, where they displayed banned books that WWU. The banned book month is basically saying that WWU is not a university to stand for censorship…. Hmm. Also, you can purchase FHM and Maxim magazines on campus which have much more provocative pictures than the calendar. In fact when I went to meet with Jim I saw the cover of the Stranger for free in the VU with a picture of a young man in boxers with the title screaming about amateur porn and sex tapes. Jim said, “the buck stops here” when I asked who I could speak of above him. Most calendars only show pictures of beautiful women, our calendar has bios on each of the girls and shows them as educated and interesting women. We are currently working on petitioning the schools ruling. 300 people have joined our petition on Facebook. We are hoping the university will reconsider their decision. I contacted the Western Front regarding the story because I thought it was wrong and that the students should know. The Western Front printed two articles about the story: Western Front Article 1 Western Front Article 2

The Bellingham Herald also wrote an article about it.

Bellingham Herald Article

Evidently the seattle times did as well and they mentioned it on King 5 news. King 5 contacted me this morning to do an interview on friday.

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