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October 23, 1916 - The Alumni Weekly mapped out the plays of the previous week’s Gopher football game, such as in this 81–0 Minnesota–South Dakota trouncing.

For 100 years, the alumni magazine has been a chronicler of University happenings, a voice of alumni, and a forum for exploring new ideas. What follows are 100 excerpts and summaries of stories that appeared in the alumni magazine in its century of publication.

April 28, 1902 University alumnus and former assistant botany professor Alexander Anderson (’94) “recently made an invention which bids fair to bring him fame and money.” Anderson discovered how to “pop” starch foods, leading to the creation of puffed rice and other puffed cereal grains.

February 1, 1904 The General Alumni Association was launched, and 350 alumni turned out for the event. Professor Henry Nachtrieb, first chairman of the organization, said, “We are not a political organization, but if it becomes necessary for us to go into politics to keep the University out of politics, we shall go into politics.”

September 26, 1904 After surviving fires in 1891 and 1893, the University’s Old Main burned to the ground September 24, 1904. The west wing was built in 1858, the east wing in 1876, and both survived previous fires. The building and its contents, valued at $187,000, were lost, but the mail was rescued by three firemen and a medical student who guided them to the Old Main post office.

October 10, 1904 A movement was afoot among University men to organize an Anti Hat-Lifting Society, the members of which would no longer greet women by tipping their hats. The men claimed it “is a nuisance to have to expose their heads to the weather at least a dozen times while passing from one building to another.” In turn, the women decided that “too much time is wasted by dropping a chain of serious thought to smile upon young men.” It appears that the movement subsequently died.

October 16, 1905 The Alumni Weekly reported that President Theodore Roosevelt urged college football men “to do away with the dangerous features which at times degrade a noble game, making it altogether brutal.” The editors went on to say: “There is just one single rule, easily enforced, which will do away with most of the evils of the game. . . . Every student trying for the football team must be a bona fide student. . . . We freely admit that the enforcement of this rule would create a revolution—but would a revolution be undesirable?”

November 11, 1907 University women organized an equal suffrage club the week before. The first meeting, held in Shevlin Hall, was attended by 35 of the 900 women at the University.

December 2, 1907 The Alumni Weekly endorsed the creation of a clubhouse for men on campus. “The men of the University need a place where they can go at any time, and meet other men and get acquainted with each other and satisfy their craving for social life. If such provision is not made where they can have what is an imperative demand of their natures, satisfied under proper conditions, they will get what they want under conditions which are demoralizing.”

December 16, 1907 University alumna Essie Winning Williams (’99) was the first woman to plead a case before the Minnesota Supreme Court.

January 18, 1908 A report about the department of medicine classes held on Sundays raised a storm of protest and the class was canceled. “The people of the State will not stand for such actions and apart from any question of morals, the practice is bad for the individual as well as the institution.”

October 5, 1908 A poem was found in the boat Arthur Upson (’05), an assistant professor and popular figure on campus, was rowing just before he drowned. Upson, who had won fame as a poet, drowned August 14 in Lake Bemidji. The complete manuscript Upson was working on, however, apparently was lost with him, and a reward was offered for its recovery.

September 19, 1910 The Minnesota Daily had been “taken in” by an unfounded story appearing in another newspaper. The rumor was that former president Theodore Roosevelt had been offered the presidency of the University of Minnesota at a salary of $200,000 and that James J. Hill had offered $30 million as an endowment if Mr. Roosevelt would take the job.

January 30, 1911 The

February 16, 1903 - Judging sheep at the School of Agriculture

alumnae of the University who were specially interested in women’s athletics formed an alumnae athletic association. “They . . . feel that there is an opportunity to show their interest in athletics for women at the University at the present time and possibly to be of decided service.”

November 25, 1912 The agricultural college’s educational train returned after a two-week trip, during which 22,700 people attended lectures and demonstrations. The train had six cars carrying horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, poultry, machinery, dairy products, and farm crops. “Everywhere the train went it was received with enthusiasm and the attendance was flattering.”

May 19, 1913 Approximately 400 women assembled and voted to adopt the following resolution: “We, the women of the University of Minnesota, abolish all ragging; ragging to include the tango, and all forms of extreme dancing; extreme dancing to be defined as all dancing not in the waltz position.” The Student Council adopted a simple resolution at the same time.

February 8, 1915 The Students’ Prohibition Club petitioned to have an 1883 state law amended. The law prohibited the sale of liquor within one mile of the main building on campus but exempted Minneapolis west of the river. When the law was written, no bridges would enable anyone to get to campus without traveling at least a mile. By 1915, there were 75 saloons within a mile of campus, over the river. A bridge had brought many of those establishments within a direct mile of the University.

June 12, 1916 The Alumni Weekly protested the fact that magnificent campus oak trees were being sacrificed for new buildings and not replaced. Many of the oaks could have been saved, the editor wrote. The editors suggested that the University take care of the remaining oaks, restrain from destroying those that could be saved, and create a plan for reforesting the campus with oaks.

April 9, 1917 One hundred thirty-nine members of the University faculty signed a telegram to President Woodrow Wilson urging that a state of war with Germany be declared immediately. “The limit of national patience has been reached. Germany understands no argument save force. We urge the immediate recognition by congress of the state of war brought about by Germany, and prompt and vigorous action for the protection of our national interests and the rights of our citizens.”

September 23, 1918 The Alumni Weekly reported on an agricultural achievement: “A Jersey Cow, Lady Goldie Y, produced more than her own weight in butter at the University farm last year.”

October 7, 1918 The executive committee of the Board of Regents voted to indefinitely postpone the opening of the University, except for the Student Army Training Corps, because of the severe influenza outbreak.

October 20, 1919 A sophomore was believed to be the first female student whose mother and grandmother both attended the University. Catherine Sweet’s mother earned a degree in 1893, and her grandmother was a student in 1872.

October 28, 1920 Janet Rankin Aiken (’12) submitted an essay urging women to “keep both her business and her home.” She wrote: “Do intelligent men prefer house-keepers who stay within the home, or home-makers who are also intelligent companions?” A life solely raising children with “the pettiness of home routine” is a “half life, and the children as well suffer when this is so.”

February 3, 1921 An enrollment boom over the next 20 years was predicted, because 40 percent of Minnesota children were still in school at age 15, and 20 percent at age 18.

October 27, 1921 “Apologies for the actions of coach Williams in placing four-digit numbers on the backs of the Minnesota players in the Northwestern game have been forwarded to all members of the Conference,” began a University News Budget item. Henry Williams said his use of “the freak numerical code . . . was a little joke on the rulemakers” who had mandated the use of numbers just a year earlier.

December 15, 1921 Beloved English professor Richard “Dickie” Burton, in a lecture on Minnesota literature, sharply criticized Sinclair Lewis and his novel Main Street. “That street called Main may seem more like a side alley or a cow pasture five

April 27, 1922 - A story about Company Q, a cadet corps of University co-eds in the late 19th century, reported that their formation was startling and that “the girls who composed it were considered alarmingly ‘advanced’—indeed, almost ‘queer.’” They represented the most active and prominent members of the classes, however, and so reportedly were respected.

years hence. . . . I am as tired of talking of Main Street as I am sure you must have gotten tired reading it.” He predicted that William Watts Folwell’s four-volume history of Minnesota would live on long after Lewis’s novel was forgotten. Of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Burton acknowledged his talent and hoped the writer would “get sober soon.”

December 6, 1923 Dr. Strachnauer, head of the University surgery department, declared that 90 percent of all cancer could be cured in its “second month’s stage.” Dr. Slye, a heredity specialist, found through 15 years of mouse experiments that “cancer is hereditary” and that three out of four descendents would possess the dominant cancer characteristics of the parents.

February 7, 1924 As part of the effort to “solve the immigration problem scientifically,” the University’s psychology department received a National Research Council grant to develop tests of mechanical ability and then to determine whether certain kinds of mechanical ability related to intelligence. The work was part of an effort to add a scientific basis to various racial theories then being expounded. The article described the post–World War I situation: “Hordes of aliens storm the gates of Ellis Island, demagogues shriek from street corners, and politicians bicker in legislative halls.”

May 8, 1924 In a report on the year’s fashion trend, male seniors were said to carry canes to distinguish themselves as near-graduates. The canes were made “of unvarnished wood so that they may be autographed. . . . To keep pace with the men in the class, the women students have taken to swagger sticks.” Swagger sticks are short, slender sticks, metal tipped, typically tucked under the arm by officers in military parades.

April 9, 1925 Bill Stout (’05), called the “Henry Ford of aviation,” was profiled after inventing the first all-metal airplane, the Stout “air Pullman.” Tests showed the aluminum plane to be stronger, lighter, and faster than the wood-and-cloth design that was then the standard. His air Pullman was one of the first commercial passenger planes. He later invented the Stout Tri-motor and sold it to Henry Ford, who renamed it the Ford Tri-motor, one of the landmark planes in aviation history.

October 23, 1926 “The future of auto parking on the University campus will be a serious one,” an article stated, as the three biggest lots were about to be used for buildings and 60 percent of students lived in Minneapolis and St. Paul and drove home every day. “The problem is one for future study by transportation experts,” the article concluded.

March 12, 1927 From an editorial urging action to defeat a bill, then making its way through the legislature, that would outlaw the teaching of evolution: “The alumni, representing, as we believe they do, the higher searchers for truth, must rally united to the standard that truth and the search for truth in every form must not be padlocked. The cry must be not evolution or anti-evolution. The two can reside peacefully side by side if indeed not with the other. The cry must be for tolerance. Tolerance will save the world. Tolerance will prevent wars, destruction, ravage. Tolerance will allow one man to be respectful of the belief of his neighbor whether or not he agrees with that viewpoint. We must exercise the use of tolerance or the world will rapidly plunge backward, not forward; civilization, so painfully built up over the centuries, will be struck a blow so serious that recovery will be doubtful.”

May 12, 1928 A University women’s group protested having to maintain a C average to be eligible to participate in extracurricular activities. The group’s main point of contention was that rules for men’s participation merely stated that males needed to be “not failing.”

February 19, 1929 Accounting instructor Harold Fraine urged changing to a calendar of 13 months, each with 28 days, to benefit business with easier and clearer accounting. The extra day (to reach 365) would be December 29 and a national holiday. The extra month would fall between June and July and be called “Sol.”

November 8, 1930 Masquerading as a Swedish immigrant girl with “No Inglis,” alumna Nora Burglon crossed the United States from New York to Seattle to observe the reactions of the public to her assumed

November 19, 1938 - An aerial view of campus showed the site for the new union, to be built where the tennis courts are in the upper-right corner of the photograph.

character. She planned to write a book about her experiences. Except for kind service from “negros,” she found that “Far from being the hospitable nation which it claims to be, America is apt to take advantage of the immigrant on every occasion.”

November 12, 1932 For the previous school year, 8,175 people were registered in the University’s correspondence study department. Registrants represented 35 states, the District of Columbia, Alaska, and the Philippine Islands and three foreign countries: India, Canada, and Jamaica.

November 18, 1933 The University Farm developed and improved 37 varieties of tree fruits and small fruits. Their outstanding contribution was the Latham raspberry, which made Minnesota the third biggest raspberry-producing state in the nation. The income to Minnesota raspberry growers each year from the Latham variety alone represented between two and three times as much money as the state had ever spent for fruit breeding.

May 12, 1934 “Traditions come and traditions go, but the annual spring pajama parade went too far this week,” the Alumni Weekly reported. “This traditional nocturnal prowl has usually been confined to a relatively small area in the vicinity of Tenth Avenue and Sanford Hall. This year, however, the boys trekked across the campus to the new Nurses’ Hall and caused considerable confusion in that sector. The police and firemen confined their protective activities to the Tenth Avenue area and were not prepared to stem the advance on the nurses’ residence.” The day following the parade, the Minnesota Daily in a front-page editorial urged the discontinuance of the pajama march tradition.

April 13, 1935 Approximately 2,000 University students, joining in a national student antiwar demonstration, gathered in front of Northrop Memorial Auditorium. The meeting was not sanctioned by the U and was attacked by the Minnesota Daily. But the principal speaker was Governor Floyd B. Olson, who said that his attitude toward military drill had at one time caused his expulsion from the University.

July 1937 The Alumni Weekly recalled the school days of Minerva Smith Dunn, the first female student at the University, who returned for Reunion Day. Smith registered in 1869 and took a boat to get to campus because no streetcar ran near her south Minneapolis home. But her long dresses got so damp from the grass by the river that she and other women who would eventually register at the U bought a pony and cart to make the trip. Smith was at the top of her class when she was forced to leave school because of trouble with her eyesight.

February 5, 1938 The Board of Regents voted 8–1 to pass a resolution clearing the name of political science professor William Schaper, whom the 1917 regents had dismissed on charges of disloyalty because he was opposed to the entrance of the United States into the World War. Schaper could not find another college faculty position until 1925. The resolution made Schaper professor emeritus, authorized payment of $5,000 in compensation for the loss of his 1917–18 salary, and included a statement about academic freedom to serve as a guide in future cases.

January 14, 1939 Four alumni sharing an apartment in New York City all took the name “Zzyzo” so as not to clutter the already oversized telephone directory with their individual names. This gave them the final listing in the directory. “In addition to being a novelty,” the Alumni Weekly reported, “it was a decided convenience to any friend who might have to look their number up in the telephone book.” Bob Ripley heard about the Zzyzo men and had them as guests on his Believe It or Not network radio program.

March 4, 1939 A newly formed group of “150 per cent Americans,” whose purpose was to combat student communists and their activities on campus, nearly crumbled in its second meeting when the president found that his lieutenants were Marxists. The lieutenants, however, declared they were as patriotic as the president. “The matter will be ironed out in the another meeting,” the Alumni Weekly reported. “They have yet to decide by what device or devices a 150 per cent American may be measured.”

December 14, 1940 Regents failed to approve

September 1943 - A group of soldiers headed over the Washington Avenue Bridge to Coffman Union for lunch. Summer enrollment was up, with the U operating year-round to meet wartime training needs.

a student hitchhiking club, so the group re-formed as the Student Travellers’ Alliance. The organization planned to work to make hitchhiking legal for those with a special license. Alliance members would be registered, fingerprinted, and provided identification cards and armbands to be worn when hitchhiking.

December 13, 1941 Ira Weil Jeffrey (’39) was killed in the December 7 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, becoming the first known Minnesota casualty of World War II. “Let the University bow the head and bend the knee in memory and eternal pride for its son, Ensign Ira Weil Jeffrey, who rushed to his country’s colors in time of national danger and had given his life when the smoke had cleared from the first bombs that fell in time of war.” It was later reported that 568 alumni died while serving in the armed forces during the war.

October 1943 “Girl cheerleaders have become part of the Saturday afternoon scene in Memorial Stadium,” the Minnesota Alumnus reported. Women were also in the marching band for the first time, replacing men who had been called to service in World War II. The female cheerleaders apparently stayed part of the campus scene, but women were removed from the marching band after the war and given their own “Girl’s Band” in 1950. It was not until 1972 that the marching band would again admit women to its ranks.

December 1943 “Japanese-Americans may now enroll as students in the University of Minnesota or be employed by the University,” although they must first “obtain clearance for the office of the provost marshal general of the United States and a personal security form must be executed,” the alumni magazine reported.

March 1945 On his first visit home since being called to active duty in April 1943, Commander Harold Stassen (B.A. ’27, J.D. ’29), former Minnesota governor, discussed his upcoming mission as part of the U.S. delegation to a conference aimed at creating the United Nations. “The result will not be, and cannot be, entirely in accord with any nation’s or any person’s individual views,” he said. “But [to do] nothing at all would start us on our way along the short road of inaction, to world-wide depressions and to the next and most tragic world war.”

April 1945 In a harrowing account, Captain Jack Turnacliff (B.A. ’42) described the February 1944 landing at Iwo Jima, a Pacific island with an airfield within range of Tokyo. Approaching the beach amid “noise and confusion . . . we all felt very, very small. . . . Mortar shells were bursting to the sides and in the water, and ahead the constant stream of machine gun bullets churned the sand.” Gaining shelter on the beach in a shell hole, “I looked around and found I was between a dead Marine and another with blood all over his face. He looked at me and said, ‘I guess I lost my fingers.’”

June 1946 College of Agriculture Dean Charles Rogers urged state farmers to plant mint on their “waste peat lands.” Mint oils were in great demand as food and drug flavorings. Between $67.50 and $210 could be realized per acre at current prices, with no decline in demand seen. “It is the favorite flavor for adults, surveys show,” he said.

March 1947 Seven temporary buildings were moving to campus to help handle record enrollments, including more than 16,000 veterans. The University planned to give the buildings abbreviations, but the Minnesota Daily suggested more illustrative names. The structure next to Murphy Hall would be “Mrs. Murphy” and one next to Anatomy would be called “The Appendix.”

September 1948 “The realization of a long-time dream was achieved on the campus of the University of Minnesota this summer when finished pig iron was produced for the first time in history from the taconite rock which is available in such abundance in Minnesota’s Iron Range area.” Professor E.W. Davis’s project “carries great and vital significance for the future of the iron ore industry of the state and the steel industry of the nation.”

October 1949 In a broad discussion of communism on campus, Minnesota, Voice of the Alumni carried several comments. President James L. Morrill: “[College presidents] find themselves harassed by a rash of stultifying teachers’ oaths, imposed by stampeded legislatures;

July-August 1943 - The University’s brain cancer detection device was part of a story about how U research facilities draw top faculty.

by textbook witch-hunts in which the aura of thought control and the odor of burning books are plainly evident; by trustees, frightened and forgetful of the true meaning of trusteeship. . . . Will [alumni] also speak out, now, for the institutions of their allegiance? Are they independent minds or the stereotypes of the mass? Will they rise for freedom, or run with the pack?” Alumni Association president Arthur Hustad responded: “[Alumni] know that today in this mad, suspicious world their university and universities everywhere—the last strongholds of freedom of thought—are under the singular attack of a sweeping hysteria by segments of our own democratic people. . . . [We] will defend to the last by vigorous and united action the right of the University for ‘the opportunity to face the issue in the spirit of the university itself.’”

November 1950 The alumni magazine took up the issue of whether Gopher football games should be televised. While alumni backed the idea—including because the state’s youth should watch Minnesota football and not some other team—the editors wrote: “all indications . . . seem to show that TV will definitely result in a smaller attendance and, therefore, a lessened income.” Since the gate receipts from football supported all the other intercollegiate athletic programs at the time, the entire objection was financial.

December 1950 Two faculty members in the University’s medical school at the Mayo Foundation, Rochester, were the first University or Mayo Foundation staff members to receive a Nobel prize. Dr. Philip Hench (M.S. ’31), professor of medicine, and Dr. Edward C. Kendall, professor of physiological chemistry, won the 1950 Nobel prize in medicine for their contributions to the discovery of the hormones ACTH and cortisone and their successful use in treating rheumatic fever, rheumatoid arthritis, certain eye defects, and other diseases.

December 1951 In a case that drew national attention, W.L. Sholes (B.A. ’22) requested a court order banning religious activities on campus. “[I]ronical, to say the least,” said an editorial, “when one remembers that only a few years ago many alumni were prone to believe the University to be a Godless place.” The district judge denied the request, and the alumni magazine reassured parents that “on entering the University a boy or girl has every opportunity to follow the dictates of his or her religious training or background.”

November 1954 In a tongue-in-cheek article titled “Minnesota’s Mass Murderess,” the writer described Mabel (Hodnefield) Seeley (B.A. ’26 ), as “a diminutive, soft-spoken person . . . who is quite cold-hearted and conscienceless, almost indifferent, about the trail of blood she’s left behind.” Mabel Seeley was not a murderess but the author of several successful murder mysteries published between 1938 and 1954.

February 1955 “The U of M has swung entirely too far to the ‘left’ to receive any further support from me. The shade of the whole set-up over there is now deep ‘pink.’” This excerpt of a letter from an anonymous alum provoked a strong response by the editor: “[H]e was unwilling to sign his name . . . it could very easily be that he is . . . lying about being a Minnesota alumnus. And in a case like this, it is just as strongly libelous for him to claim to be a product of the University of Minnesota as it is for him to imply that the University itself nurtures subversion.”

November 1955 Ethel and Albert, a popular NBC-TV situation comedy in the ’50s, was written by Peg Lynch (B.A. ’37), who also starred as Ethel. In an article about herself, Peg wrote: “Friends have fondly referred to me as a ‘triple threat’ because I wrote the series, act in it, and maintain a normal family home life. . . . I don’t seem to be ‘acting.’ . . . I do what comes naturally, which is all the average housewife does.”

November 1956 An inexpensive plastic lung to keep patients’ blood oxygenated during heart surgery was developed by a team of University surgeons. “The new lung can be mass-produced for about $15 and will spread the possibility of heart surgery from a few heart centers to any hospital equipped for major operations.”

December 1957 When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, University scientists’ thoughts

October 1963 - Jerry Pelletier, the smallest Gopher at 5-8, 158 pounds, ran under the outstretched arm of Carl Eller, the largest, who stood 6-51/2 and weighed 241 pounds.

turned to space travel and several all-important questions: How is one going to return to the earth’s atmosphere? How can the returning spaceship keep from melting like wax under a flame? How can a manned rocket be sent to the moon? “Current manuals on space travel omitted the chapter on how to get home,” said the alumni magazine, “and volunteers are likely to be few for a one-way trip.”

April 1958 “A 60-foot, 17-ton computing machine to be installed on campus will enable the University to do in five minutes what used to take people 150 hours. This computing giant is destined to revolutionize the world of statistics as machines revolutionized the world of labor.”

February 1959 A medical school alumnus was becoming one of the nation’s foremost experts on children’s books. Irvin Kerlan (M.D. ’34, M.P.H. ’38), “is a book collector’s collector of such painstaking reconnaissance as to have amassed, within 12 years, more than 8,500 bound volumes of illustrated children’s books, 99 percent of which are first editions. The bulk of this collection . . . is now a permanent part of the U of M libraries.”

November 1960 Minnesota track coach Jim Kelly was overwhelmingly elected to coach the U.S. track squad in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Deluged with charges that it was making the trip for the fun of it and expected to be outmatched by the Soviets, the U.S. team collected the greatest number of gold medals any team had ever won since the revival of the games in 1896.

January 1961 An article on the Minnesota Plan for Continuing Education for Women explored ways of bridging the gap between college graduation and the long period of personal productivity after homemaking responsibilities had diminished. The plan was designed to help women prepare for multiple-role lives, making it possible “to have both but at different times.”

January 1964 The Alumni News published an excerpt from a Board of Regents statement on academic freedom after demands for an investigation of the U to discover communist influences. The statement read, in part: “The student and the professor must live in an atmosphere where questioning is encouraged; where every alternative can be explored; where their free minds may be allowed to test the validity of each idea, and where they feel free to follow wherever truth may lead. Such a free atmosphere is not merely necessary to university freedom; it is also the way of life which we have a right to associate with America.”

December 1965 Student protests against U.S. participation in the Vietnam War prompted a statement of support from the University chapter of the American Association of University Professors. The statement included this observation: “The American student, so often criticized for excessive conformity, is now considered excessively demonstrative. The American ideal of freedom has lately been re-defined by some as the freedom to utter majority opinions only.” It went on to say, “Free discussion of unpopular views and organized action in support of those views is not only fundamental to intellectual freedom but is a valuable asset to the development of students as citizens.”

February 1966 Gopher men’s basketball star Lou Hudson did not allow a broken arm to keep him from playing in an important game against Indiana. With his right arm, wrist, and thumb in a cast, Hudson entered the game when the Gophers were down 13–9 and proceeded to lead a comeback. He came off the bench two more times when the Gophers fell behind to give his team the lead and eventually the win, 91–82. With his left hand, Hudson scored 20 points and made 10 rebounds. “It was truly one of the greatest displays of athletic ability and determination I have ever seen,” said coach John Kundla.

May 1967 “Educators and alumni alike are casting anxious eyes westward, watching with growing concern the activities—and antics—of the new Governor of California and his relationship with higher education,” an editor’s note stated, as introduction to an article reprinted from the Los Angeles Times about California Governor Ronald Reagan, who had drastically cut the University of California’s budget. “There is fear that an anti-intellectual political reactionary now governs California and is determined to bring higher education

November 1979 - The U of M became the first U.S. university to meet with its Chinese alumni after the People’s Republic of China formally established diplomatic relations January 1, 1979. Professor of plant breeding and genetics Donald Rasmusson (left), met with an alumnus.

growth to a grinding halt,” the article read. “In what other spirit could a public official scorn the universities for ‘subsidizing intellectual curiosity,’ as Reagan did at his last press conference? If a university is not a place where intellectual curiosity is to be encouraged, and subsidized, then it is nothing.”

November 1968 The Alumni News covered the fallout from a student demonstration protesting the ban of the essay “Student As Nigger” in freshman English courses and the coverage of the demonstration in the Minnesota Daily. The front page of the Daily included a photograph of a woman holding a sign bearing a four-letter word and an accompanying article using the same profane word. Hearings by the Board in Charge of Student Publications subsequently considered the editor’s judgment and whether the policy statement of editors’ duties and responsibilities should be revised in light of changing social attitudes.

February 1969 For three days in January, seven students representing the Afro-American Action Committee took over Morrill Hall to express their dissatisfaction with the administration’s response to three demands, one being the establishment of a department of Afro-American studies. Damage was done to the building and some office equipment. Negotiations resulted in an agreement to address the students’ demands and the appointment of a 12-member commission to investigate the occupation. In a subsequent issue, the alumni magazine reported that the administration issued a policy statement defining the guidelines for response to disruptive events on campus and affirming support for freedom of thought and expression for all.

November 1969 “In early October, two scientists, three patrolmen and a briefcase carrying one and one-half ounces of rocks and dust from the moon left the Twin Cities International Airport for the University of Minnesota. The lunar samples, carried personally from the space agency’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, were brought to the University’s Space Center by Dr. Robert Pepin, assistant professor of physics, and Dr. V. Rama Murthey, professor of geochemistry, for study.”

December 1969 The plight of a one-pound, six-ounce baby whose survival was in jeopardy came to the attention of doctors at University Hospitals who swung into action. They flew “Tiny Mary” in a specially equipped intensive care unit from Karlstad, Minnesota, to the Anoka airport and then by helicopter to the University. This air-ambulance service was the first of its kind in the nation.

February 1970 Spanish Fly, an alleged aphrodisiac, “is nothing but a urinary tract irritant. If you want to itch all day—go ahead and use it,” a University pharmacy student told a class of high-school students. A drug-abuse information program launched by the U’s College of Pharmacy placed pharmacy juniors and seniors in high-school classrooms to talk straight to teenagers about experimenting with drugs.

May 1971 Joyce Hughes (J.D. ’65), the first African American woman to graduate from the University’s Law School, also became the first black person and first woman to join the Law School faculty. “I’m not comfortable about being called the first in such areas when it’s really not so much to my credit as to the discredit of society,” she said.

March 1973 While Twin Cities community leaders discussed and voted on plans to build a domed stadium in downtown Minneapolis, University regents, faculty, and administrators looked at models and sketches of a renovated Memorial Stadium with an air-cushioned dome on top. Four versions of a domed Memorial Stadium were presented to U officials. The “Ultimate Scheme” would cost $22.2 million and include dropping the playing field by 12 feet, adding telescoping seats at field level, and adding a second tier and VIP seating.

October 1975 The University’s Cancer Detection Center received a National Cancer Institutes grant to study the effectiveness of a new test, for blood in stools, as a widespread method of detecting large intestinal cancer. The study would involve 30,000 participants and take 10 years. At the time, 100,000 new cases were diagnosed annually and the fatality rate was 90 percent.

February 1976 University researchers in

March 1980 - U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder (B.A. ’61) was profiled in an article titled “Her Place Is in the House.”

the Department of Family Social Science found that ghosts were a natural and nearly universal part of grief and mourning. The researchers analyzed descriptions of grief and mourning in 66 cultures around the world and found that almost every group experienced ghosts—seeing what appeared to be the ghost of someone who had died.

January 1978 The Alumni News reported that University Student Legal Services, which opened that school year above a bank in Stadium Village, served more than 1,000 students by the end of fall quarter. Funded by student activity fees and handling legal problems that threatened students’ ability to attend school, the legal services program had a staff of four lawyers, two paralegals, and five support employees and was the most comprehensive campus legal program in the nation.

January 1978 Arthur Carrizales became the first Minnesota-born Chicano to graduate from the University Medical School. With two undergraduate degrees and a master’s degree from other schools to his name, Carrizales was driven to become a doctor after his son was born prematurely with a blood infection.

March 1979 Brubaker, a motion picture starring Robert Redford to be filmed that spring, was based on the experiences of Tom Murton, a former criminal justice professor at the University. Before coming to the U, Murton had been superintendent of the Arkansas State Penitentiary’s Cummings Prison Farm in the 1960s when the bodies of three mutilated inmates were unearthed in the prison yard. Murton found that 234 prisoners were missing and thought their bodies might also be buried in the yard. The Arkansas governor fired Murton, so he and author Joe Hyam wrote a book about the buried prisoners, Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal. The book brought Murton to the attention of the University, which hired him.

November 1979 The Alumni News reported that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 “Bakke decision” had little impact on minority enrollment at the University. Allan Bakke (’62)—who earned a degree in engineering, joined the Marines, and later worked for NASA—had been denied admission to a California medical school twice, in 1973 and 1974, even though his scores were better than more than a dozen minority applicants who were accepted. A white male, Bakke sued, charging reverse discrimination. The Supreme Court ruled that admission quotas are unconstitutional and ordered the University of California to admit Bakke. U.S. colleges and universities braced for a flood of lawsuits following the decision, but few were brought. Refusing to grant interviews, second-year medical student Bakke told a friend, “All I really want is to be a regular member of the class. I wonder if I ever will be.”

March 1981 A “University Blimp” was proposed as a sort of traveling campus by former architecture assistant professor Gerald Allan. Even with design and construction features allowing up to 300 passengers and living facilities, the blimp would cost about the same as a traditional classroom building, he said. A group called Criteria Foundation, Inc., proposed the project.

June 1981 A call for opinions (in April 1981) on whether the Gopher football team should remain in Memorial Stadium or move to the Metrodome netted more than 100 letters. Those published ran 17–11 in favor of the Dome. A Metrodome proponent cited the old stadium’s maintenance needs, while touting the Dome’s controlled climate and proximity to campus: “Would any sensible businessman, for example, continue to operate in an outmoded, inefficient, multi-storied building when an entirely new, efficient facility is available not two miles away?” A Memorial Stadium backer pointed to tradition and memories: “I believe fans of Gopher football care about subtler things such as texture, nostalgia, tradition, and beauty of the overall event.”

October 1982 On the occasion of his passing, Henry Fonda’s two years on the Minneapolis campus were recalled. The Omaha native worked several jobs while studying journalism. “At the end of my sophomore year (1925) I was so exhausted that when they passed out the blue books for the final exams, I just sat in class and drew pictures instead of answering the questions,” he is quoted in an excerpt from his biography, Fonda:

November–December 1991 - Jim Thornton (right) wrote about Minnesota twin research and being a twin with brother John. Photo by Per Breiehagen

My Life. “That did it! I flunked out of Minnesota.” In 1960, when offered an honorary University degree, Fonda responded that he had done so poorly he would be embarrassed to accept the award.

September–October 1985 Campus rallies and protests spurred the alumni association to poll 300 graduates about divesting University holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. Only 26 percent favored divestment, and only 35 percent felt the U should try to influence companies operating in South Africa. Slim majorities did feel the U should not invest any more money in those companies and should use its shareholder voting power to attempt to influence policy. The margin of error was plus or minus 5 percent.

January–February 1986 Five years after being released from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, after 444 days as a hostage there, L. Bruce Laingen (M.A. ’49) wrote about fighting terrorism. “Terrorism is evil, wrong on every count. But as was the case in Tehran, its practitioners are usually rational in purpose, their anger born of deeply felt grievances. . . . Until and unless progress takes place in the resolution of those grievances, there will remain those who believe that grievance can be met only by resorting to violence.”

September–October 1986 Responding to criticism for having expelled three Gopher men’s basketball players later found not guilty of rape charges, University President Ken Keller was direct: “It was never our intent to judge the legal guilt or innocence of [the players]. What we did judge—the only thing we intended to judge—was what kinds of people we want to support financially. [The issue] goes to the heart of what a university can do to uphold its ideals and its values.”

September–October 1986 U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder (B.A. ’61) wrote an essay on her proposed Parental and Medical Leave Act: “[The act] would allow the United States to shake itself of a static model of the American family in which the father works and the mother stays at home. . . . No longer will job or economic security be traded against the needs of the family.”

November–December 1988 U.S. chief arms negotiator Max Kampelman (M.A. ’46, Ph.D. ’51) was profiled one year after getting the Soviet Union to agree to mutually eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces. Asked what made the job so tough, he responded: “The stakes. They’re all important issues of national security, national interest—conceivably, the national survival. That’s a big burden.”

March–April 1989 Professor Alfred Nier (B.S. ’31, M.S. ’33, Ph.D. ’36) and his former student Edward Ney (B.S. ’42) worked on the physics of the uranium atom for the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Forty-five years later they both felt building, and using, the bomb was the right thing to do. “In an invasion of Japan, American casualties would have run into the hundreds of thousands, and Japanese casualties would have been even higher,” Nier said. “Knowing they had a weapon that would end the war in a few days, how could the government not use it?” Ney said the development of nuclear weapons was inevitable and it was important for the United States to get there first: “If you are going to blame anyone, blame nature. If you can do something, somebody will find out how.”

November–December 1989 Andrea Salo, a University exchange student in China, marched on Tiananmen Square with thousands of Chinese students at the start of the student uprisings there. She returned to Tiananmen Square later in May, just days before soldiers killed hundreds of protesters. She found a scene that had been jubilant turning tired and divisive. “The students were ready to go home; they were ready to quit,” she recalled. “But they couldn’t go home because they hadn’t gotten anything from the government yet. . . . The movement was falling apart.”

March–April 1990 In the cover story, former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale (B.A. ’51, J.D. ’56) said he was concerned about actions to restrict access to the U of M. “You never know what a young person is going to do or what their potential is,” he said, counting himself among those who might have been excluded under a tighter admissions policy. “When I went to the University, I thank the gods they weren’t focusing, because I seriously doubt I would have made it if they had.”

January–February 1991 In a profile in Minnesota, AIDS expert Paul Volberding (M.D. ’75) said that on his first day of work at San Francisco General Hospital in 1981, he saw one of the first diagnosed cases of AIDS. By 1991, Volberding had become one of the nation’s most respected and compassionate authorities on the disease.

March–April 1993 Former University president Ken Keller, who was pressured to resign in 1988 when the local media ran stories about extravagant renovations made to the president’s residence, told his side of the story in a profile chronicling his rise and fall at the U. “I made a lousy judgment that the president could run the University with a board that was not unified behind him,” he said. “Well, he can’t.”

July–August 1994 In a profile titled “The Devil’s Advocate,” Polly Nelson (B.A. ’76, J.D. ’84) discussed her work as the defense attorney for serial killer Ted Bundy, who was executed in 1989. She worked on Bundy’s case for three years and then took the next three years off to pull her life back together. The article included copies of thank-you letters Bundy wrote to Nelson. “People ask me how Ted could live with himself because he seemed to have this other side that wasn’t violent,” she said. “He mostly wasn’t able to. He was horrified that he had done those things.”

July–August 1996 Minnesota analyzed the struggle between faculty members, administrators, and regents to revise the tenure code. “If you can’t cut your costs because they emanate to a large degree from nonremovable expenses—namely, tenured faculty with no mandatory retirement provision—then it’s a short walk from there to the conclusion that you can’t renew the institution,” said regent Jean Keffler.

November–December 1998 Former mechanical engineering professor Ed Anderson (Ph.D. ’55) was interviewed about his 30-year mission of championing personal rapid transit (PRT), an above-ground, automated mass-transit idea he developed. Anderson believed PRT technology, whose patent is owned by the University of Minnesota, would solve the world’s transit problems, but the idea never caught on. “The light rail people here had managed to block any serious consideration of PRT in Minnesota,” he said.

September–October 1999 In the article “Research, Respect, and Race,” Minnesota explored the challenge the University faces in recruiting and retaining faculty of color. “People of color on this campus often feel alienated socially and intellectually. There are many instances of hiring people of color who are the lone person—not only in their racial or ethnic group, but in their field of study,” said John Wright, associate professor of Afro-American and African studies.

January–February 2000 Minnesota devoted an issue to celebrate the grand opening of the alumni association’s first campus home: the copper- and granite-clad McNamara Alumni Center. “This is the first place people can associate with an all-University feeling versus their own little college or big college,” said Dale Olseth (B.A. ’52), who led the private fund-raising. “We’ve never had a place those people can call home, and this will become a home now.”

May–June 2000 Retired University professor Geneva Southall wrote her third book about Blind Tom, a slave pianist-composer who was exploited throughout his life. “I found out how much money Blind Tom earned—as much as $100,000 a year. And the Bethunes [who indentured him] kept it all,” she said.

September–October 2001 Minnesota featured Mizna, a journal of Arab American expression, and its founder, Kathryn Haddad (M.L.S. ’00). “The fact that we are misunderstood affects people’s lives at a very basic level,” she said. “People think it’s OK to bomb Iraq because the people there are nameless, faceless ‘terrorists.’ There’s nothing that would drive an Iraqi writer more than the need to give . . . some humanity to who you are.”

Shelly Fling is editor of Minnesota. Chris Coughlan-Smith is senior editor. Tom Garrison, Gina Kennedy, Mike Lee, and Evelyn Cottle Raedler contributed to this article.