College pair find charity is skin deep
Stunned by images and reports of the devastation wrought by the tsunami in Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, Weston native Andrew Burmon and his Stanford University classmate Joel Lewenstein wanted to find some way to help those affected. So they put on their thinking caps, and ended up taking off their clothes.
The result is ''The Freshmen 12: A Calendar," which shows Burmo, Lewenstein, and several of their classmates, both male and female, in the buff -- with their private parts discreetly concealed by props such as library books and lunch trays. All the profits from the calendar -- half of the total price of $10 -- go to tsunami relief. The calendars are sold through a website, http://larkindorm.stanford.edu/calendar/.
The 18-year-olds have raised almost $2,000 since launching the calendar Jan. 28. The money goes to Stanford Student Relief, a student group that has set a goal of raising $100,000 by the end of February to be donated to tsunami aid programs run by the charity Save the Children. The group has raised $25,000 so far.
The calendar, which Burmon says is meant to be more funny than racy, features a dozen photos of Stanford freshmen going about the usual everyday campus activities -- eating, standing among the books at the library, lounging in the dorm, even taking a shower.
''It's not as hard as you would think it would be to get people to take off their clothes -- for a good cause," said Burmon.
The duo has sold about 400 calendars and has been interviewed by CNN, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and several local TV news stations.
Lewenstein got an e-mail from the mother of his bar mitzvah date, ''saying that I had changed a lot since I was 13." Orders are coming from current, prospective, and former students, and have come from as far away as Thailand.
Burmon said they've also seen some of the calendar shots that were posted on news websites end up in ''weird places, but nothing too bad." A Google search for ''Stanford nude calendar" revealed a link to a discussion about their project on a pornographic site's bulletin board. ''I can assure you that there's no pictures [in the calendar] of what they're looking for," said Lewenstein.
Burmon and Lewenstein, who live across the hall from each other, discovered earlier in the year that they share a love of photography. After returning to school from the holiday break, they started to discuss ways they could help people affected by the disaster. Burmon joked about doing a nude calendar, like the ones done by Maine lobstermen in the off-season to supplement their income.
Then he and Lewenstein realized that it might be a fun way to raise money among their classmates. They spent the next two weeks planning and shooting the photos and securing the necessary approvals. A local
But both Burmon and Lewenstein want to make clear that though the subject matter of the project is comical, they know that the cause they aim to help is not.
''We are very cognizant of the severity of what happened. The sheer numbers of the dead and injured are just horrendous," said Lewenstein. ''What we're just trying to do is be humorous and take a light tone, while not cheapening what happened and not ignoring that part of it."
Srihari Yamanoor, cochair of Stanford Students for Relief, said that allowing Burmon and Lewenstein's efforts under their banner was a democratic decision, with board members able to review the calendar and voice any objections. But no one did, said Yamanoor, and despite worries that some members of the community might find the calendar offensive, he hasn't heard any complaints.
''The calendar has been done in good spirit, not to mock the victims," said Yamanoor. ''It also speaks to the hard work and dedication that students are giving to raise money for the tsunami effort."
Stephanie V. Siek can be reached at ssiek@globe.com.
