PIERCE BARES SEX AD.

Byline: John Miller and Lisa M. Sodders Staff Writers

How desperate for money is cash-strapped Pierce College? Desperate enough that it rented its baseball field to the X-rated Spice channel cable network for $5,000 to shoot a racy promotional video.

The move outraged some students and raised questions about how far colleges should go to raise money.

But Pierce officials aren't blushing.

``It's what I would call easy money,'' Pierce President Tom Oliver said Thursday.

The Spice Digital Network used the Joe Kelly baseball diamond on March 7-8 to shoot ``photography,'' the kind Oliver said might be seen in art classes.

``Provocative, playful, sexy and fun'' was how a spokesman for Spice - a racier pay-per-view subsidiary of Playboy TV - described the promotional video.

``It was baseball-themed (to go with spring training),'' said Spice's Scott Barton. ``There were two teams, nine women and nine men, playing baseball, who were provocatively dressed.''

During the video and photo shoot, a fence surrounding the baseball diamond was covered with a dark tarp to obscure the view of what was going on.

Oliver was not aware whether it was the first time Pierce had allowed the adult-film industry to shoot on campus, but he said it was perfectly legal and cleared by the Los Angeles Community College District.

Staff members of the Roundup, the campus newspaper that broke the story in Wednesday's edition, said they were appalled that the college would rent its facilities for such a production, particularly since Pierce has a child-development center with small children on campus.

``We were really outraged by it,'' said Marti Zamorano, 37, of West Hills, the paper's editor in chief. ``I'm a mom, and it really bothered me that they would do something like that. Other people found it degrading to women, especially since it's Women's History Month.''

In a sharply worded editorial, the Roundup said: ``Yes, Pierce needs the money. However, how far are they willing to go and what's next?''

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said the shoot was a ``grossly inappropriate use of a public facility.''

``Is this taxpayer bonds for bondage? It sends the wrong message to college students. I'm as strong a defender of the First Amendment as anybody else, but that's not what this is about.''

Diane Levine, secretary of Pierce's Faculty Senate, said faculty members were satisfied that the project went through the appropriate review process before being approved.

``It's a freedom-of-speech issue,'' said Levine, an anthropology professor. ``All I saw was catering trucks and a very large beach ball-sized baseball. Everything else was closed off.''

California's community colleges suffered two years of steep budget cuts that forced colleges to turn away thousands of students and slash course offerings. This year, a ``recovery'' budget allowed them to offer more classes, but fee increases of 136 percent over the past two years have kept some students away.

In the tight budget environment, renting campus facilities for various television and film projects has become common.

California State University, Northridge, for example, earns about $230,000 a year from renting its campus for everything from Disney's ``Sky High'' movie, about teenage superheroes, to past episodes of the television show ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' to a German milk commercial.

Pierce's enterprise manager, Larry Kraus, who handles retail activities for the college, said the campus earns between $50,000 and $75,000 a year in rentals for various film productions.

Oliver said there's a difference between ``photography,'' which he compared to the nude models the campus has in its art classes, and pornography, which the campus does not allow.

``If we know they're going to do something that's pornographic, we would say no,'' Oliver said. ``We have said no to a couple of shoots before. Photography is one thing, but when you get multiple people involved... when you co-mingle people, that's not art.''

Tim Connelly, publisher of the adult-movie trade publication Adult Video News, said colleges appear in many adult videos.

``You go wherever you can go. It's legal to shoot anywhere,'' he said. ``We have an industry directory for locations. I'm going to make sure Pierce College has a listing now.''

Lisa M. Sodders, [phone]

lisa.sodders(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

A tarp covers fences at the college field Tuesday, when the X-rated channel's video was shot.

Cyrus Azari/Pierce College Roundup