Naked Truth 101

In a basement on the University of Chicago campus, senior Jackie Todd studied a photo of a topless female student in a blond wig, kneeling seductively on a bed.

"Something about her face here, it doesn't seem right," Todd said. "Her eyes look like they're focused on something else. It just doesn't work for me."

Seated at her computer, Todd clicked onto a photo of herself lying stark naked on the wood floor in an off-campus apartment.

"Ugh, we are not using that," she said. "I'm so pale."

Todd was in the final hours of layout and design for the provocatively named Vita Excolatur, a nude student magazine that returned to campus in recent weeks after a controversial end in 2007.

Nude photography and provocative posing are what made Vita a hit when it debuted on campus in 2004. But its real mission, Todd said, was to spark dialogue about sex and sexuality.

For an editor-in-chief trying to restore dignity to a risqué publication, the distinction between art and pornography is an important one.

The publication, which is shot, produced and edited by students and funded through the student government, has a serious side befitting a school with rigid academic standards. It's a forum for student fiction, poetry, Q-and-A's about sex and intimacy, first-person accounts of being tested for sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy and other often uncomfortable subjects.

"Other [student organizations] talk about sex and sexuality, but they tend to be politicized," said Tom Tian, a fourth-year political science major who helped design the magazine. "We try to be politically neutral."

'Where Fun Comes to Die'

Vita Excolatur, which takes its name from the school motto and loosely translates to "life enriched," might seem like an anomaly on the famously uptight University of Chicago campus -- a place where Nobel winners and Rhodes scholars are as common as ivy in the summer.

Then again, for a school whose unofficial motto -- "Where Fun Comes to Die" -- still graces T-shirts on the quad, sexual expression has played an important role on campus, said Sharlene Holley, a director of student activities at the university.

For current students, it might be the annual Polar Bear run, in which dozens strip down each February for a frigid and fast jog across campus.

"I guess because of the reputation we have, a lot of people wouldn't think our students would be capable of such things," Holley said.

With Vita, though, the school has set some ground rules. Models have to be willing participants who sign release waivers. The university's name or logo cannot appear on its pages. Perhaps most important, given the free exchange of ideas and images on the Internet, Vita can't operate a website or publish its photos online.

Finding models is a challenge

Even with the school's safeguards in place, Todd acknowledged that it's a challenge finding willing male and female student models. And it's gotten worse as social networking has become more popular and students understand the ease with which nude photos can surface and be shared online, Todd said.

Along the way, Vita attempted to stay true to its artistic integrity. But like most underground publications, the magazine suffered from a loosely organized structure of editors, high turnover in leadership and occasional lapses in taste.

University officials are "up for us pushing boundaries and asking questions, but they like it a lot more when we have something to say," Todd said.

In 2007, Vita's editors came under fire when they inadvertently published the names of models who had requested anonymity, Todd said. The following year, most of those editors had left school, and there was nobody there to pick up the mantle, she said.

"Based on the way it ended last time, it wasn't easy to sell this publication and get the financial support we needed to start back up," said Todd, who produced the magazine amid her heavy class load weeks before graduation.

Todd, who was raised in what she called a conservative Catholic upbringing, said it was important to revive Vita to give an outlet for creative students, to excite and inform, and to open lines of communication about sex that often remain closed -- contributing to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and eroding relationships between couples.