Owners of an explicit adult Web site that for three years used the University of Washington as a selling point have taken down overt references to the school, as well as hundreds of photos of nude coeds taken on campus.
Potential legal hassles spurred the change, said Brett Jennings, a 25-year-old UW business school graduate and co-owner of the Web site, Dorm Angels.

“It’s not worth being the poster boy for porn in Seattle, or even having to deal with the legal bills associated with it,” Jennings said.

Until recently, most of the 50 or so nude models on the site were said to be students at the UW. The site’s title page now bills girls only as being from local colleges.

The photos removed were taken at recognizable spots on the UW campus, including the University Quad and inside Suzzallo Library.

Jennings said he removed the UW references after a News Tribune article in September reported that UW administrators had asked the state attorney general’s office assigned to UW to look at the Web site to verify it was not illegally using the school’s name and image.

However, neither school administrators nor anyone in the state attorney general’s office has viewed the site, said Norm Arkans, UW vice president of university relations.

He said the inquiry into whether Dorm Angels was misusing the school’s name and image ended when Jennings told him in a phone conversation that he had removed the UW references.

Jennings said he offered Arkans a free pass to the site, “to make things easy just so they could see for themselves that it is all on the up and up.”

Arkans declined, taking Jennings at his word.

“With assurances that the references have been removed, we do not anticipate further review, unless it is brought to our attention that references remain,” Arkans said.

In fact, while the most visible references to the UW have been deleted from the site, the school’s name still appears several times in minor spots on its pages. References to other Northwest universities and community colleges also remain.



Administrators were initially reluctant to check on the site when they learned of it earlier this year, saying the first amendment protected its proprietors and the student models. But because of a News Tribune story in July about Dorm Angels, the school asked the Attorney General’s Office for its legal take on the site, UW spokesman Bob Roseth said.

In that story, three legislators on higher education committees said they expected the administration to at least look at the site to evaluate whether the school’s trademark rights were being breached.

Arkans said the administration asked the attorney general’s division on campus to do that, but nothing came of it.

Jack Johnson, the assistant attorney general in charge of the agency’s UW office, said he didn’t know whether anyone in his office had viewed the site, or whether Dorm Angels had broken the law or violated the university’s rights. He also declined to say what, if any, direction the administration gave him.

State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle), one of the three legislators concerned about Dorm Angels, said she hopes the problem is solved. However, she still wishes the UW had investigated further.

“If I were administration, I would just want to check (the site) – trust but verify,” said Kohl-Welles, ranking minority leader of the Senate Higher Education Committee and a UW sociology professor with a background in women’s issues.

Other major universities in similar situations to the UW have examined cases of porn on campus and some have acted against those involved.

Indiana University kicked out two male students after they let a film crew shoot a porn movie in their dorm room two years ago. The school also forced the filmmakers to delete video filmed on campus from the final version of the movie.

Conversely, some schools, including Harvard and Vassar, allow student publications to picture nude students.

Jennings said he will continue Dorm Angels – started when he was a UW student in 2001 – as usual by attracting models with advertisements in the school paper and word of mouth on campus.

Kohl-Welles said she discourages naïve female students who choose, for fun or cash, to become involved with Internet pornography while at the UW.

“It could come back to haunt them years later if they were to go into a certain field,” she said. “I don’t like the idea of young women being exploited.”

Jennings has created several spin-off Web sites spotlighting girls who originally appeared on Dorm Angels.