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1902
Women’s Basket Ball
The popularity of women’s basketball at the University reaches back more than a century, and the varsity players drew crowds and respect. "In offensive work, especially, is the team strong," the March 17, 1902, Minnesota Alumni Weekly reported. "Elizabeth Jones, the little captain and forward is probably the strongest woman player in the northwest. Her work is very fast, heady and always reliable and her long throws for goal from the field arouse great enthusiasm in every game she plays."

1912
Intercollegiate Football
As football nationwide grew increasingly brutish and ungovernable, the Alumni Weekly expressed an unfettered opinion about the state of the college game. "We believe that there has grown up around the game many evils; that these evils must either be eliminated or the game abolished as an intercollegiate sport," the March 18, 1912, Alumni Weekly reported. "Intercollegiate football, as it exists today is illogical in its relations to true sport and is foreign to any of the real and legitimate purposes of the University. THAT IT EXISTS AT ALL, AS IT IS TODAY, IS A MATTER OF SUFFERANCE ON THE PART OF THOSE IN AUTHORITY."

1922
For Dr. Northrop’s Old Friends
The second president of the University, Cyrus Northrop, died April 3, 1922, at the age of 88. The Alumni Weekly dated April 6, 1922, was filled with tributes to the man who led the U from 1884 to 1910. President emeritus William Watts Folwell, then in his late 80s, wrote: "He appreciated science, he appreciated literature and art, but what he most desired was to have the University remain a place of training for character, noble aspiration, and devotion to service. What he thus inspired by precept he taught by example."

1932
Minnesota Crime Studies
The Alumni Weekly in the 1930s published lengthy articles by University scholars on a variety of topics, including the pressing issue of rising crime rates. In the April 16, 1932, issue, sociology instructor E.D. Monachesi (B.A. ’31) argued that scientific analysis of crime ought to replace unquestioned theories: "Feeble-mindedness as the cause of crime is one of the very many highly treasured opinions which we hold. . . . Perhaps only those criminals who are less efficient mentally are apprehended."

1942
Campus Red Cross
After December 7, 1941, news about how the University was contributing to the war effort dominated the pages of the Alumni Weekly. "During its first three weeks of work, the campus Red Cross surgical dressing unit turned out a total of 33,128 dressings," the March 14, 1942, issue reported. "It is an all-University project and work is done by students, by wives of faculty members, faculty women, and members of the non-academic staff of the University. . . . The first dressings made went to the University Hospitals to be stored for use in case of a local civilian emergency and now dressings are being made for the army and navy."

1952
The Wiggins Case
The February 1952 Minnesota published an article defending the University’s controversial decision not to reappoint philosophy instructor Forrest Wiggins, a tenure candidate who had publicly questioned the University’s social order and was the first full-time African American faculty member at the U. The April 1952 Minnesota carried several letters in response. From Michigan: "There are some aspects of this case which are disturbing to any white person who is sensitive to the racial dilemma." From Iowa: "It may well be that it was for the good of the University not to retain that gentleman as a teacher, simply because of his socialist and/or communist sympathies. But if it was necessary to fire him for these reasons, let us say so and be done with it."

1962
Survival—Let the People Decide
Physiology professor Maurice Visscher (Ph.D.’25, M.D. ’31) wrote a sobering article in the April 1962 Alumni News on an urgent topic of the day: surviving nuclear war. "Bluntly, it would require at least a third of the entire gross national product of our country for an entire year to give one-half of our people a sporting chance to survive in a bare physical sense the nuclear war in prospect," he wrote.

1972
Chicano Studies Department Established
In the fall of 1971, a committee was preparing a proposal for Chicano studies at the University "when a group of Chicano students demanded a University department ‘within 72 hours,’" the March 1972 Alumni News reported. A Chicano studies department, the first in the five-state area, was formed a few months later and given a chairman, two assistant professors, supplies, and library resources.

1982
Mulford Q. Sibley’s Utopia
The March 1982 Minnesota published an interview with controversial political science professor Mulford Q. Sibley about his views on disarmament, the distribution of wealth, the undemocratic development of technology, and his ever-present red necktie. The color, he said, symbolized solidarity with the working class, the socialist movement, and the "common blood that flows through the veins of all people regardless of power, wealth, or station in life."

1992
Scenes from an Education
In an interview for the March–April 1992 Minnesota, Garrison Keillor (B.A. ’66) revealed how he got into radio. "I needed a part-time job to pay for tuition," he said. "All the bright creative people were going into television then. I liked radio just fine, even though I was so shy I could hardly bear to be looked at when I was on the air. In time, I learned that the engineers looking at me from the control room didn’t really care what I was saying, they only watched out of habit. Even a shy person learns to bear up under pressure when money is at stake."

Shelly Fling is editor of Minnesota.