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A chain-smoking machine developed at the University, on display at Masonic Cancer Day in January 1956, identified and isolated chemicals that enter the human body from cigarettes. All Images courtesy of University Archives

By Tim Brady

The state of Minnesota went smoke free in public establishments this past October. Beginning more than a century earlier, U administrators, faculty, and students argued smokers’ rights and the moral considerations, unseemliness, and detritus of smoking. and for almost as long, U medical doctors and scientists have examined the effects of smoking on the human  body, announcing early and often its danger to life and lung.

“No smoking” had been an unwritten rule at the University of Minnesota since its inception, but in 1895, University President Cyrus Northrop felt obliged to make the policy clear. “Lately, either through carelessness or ignorance of custom, there has been more or less of this practice going on. We do not want smoking on the campus,” Northrop told a student audience. It’s easy to imagine him thumping the lectern for emphasis. Unfortunately for Northrop, and for the smokers themselves, the habit was already deeply ensconced among students and faculty members. A year before his edict, the student paper, Ariel, had conducted an informal survey of some upperclassmen at the U and found that 10 out of 44 seniors smoked. Of 48 juniors who were asked, 21 admitted that they were regular smokers.body, announcing early and often its danger to life and lung.

Tobacco use had soared in the United States with the invention of cigarette rolling machines in the 1880s. Pipes and cigars were also commonly used on campus, and favorite smoking venues were the steps of Old Main and the steps of the library. In the earliest years, disapproval of smoking was dominated by moral considerations, often related to the presumed sensibilities of the women on campus. If the bad boys at the U felt compelled to smoke, went the thinking, they should at least have the courtesy to do it beyond the sight of the ladies. “We believe,” wrote the editors

The cover of the February 1930 Ski-U-Mah depicted the incident in which Harrison Salisbury lit a cigarette in the University Library.

at Ariel, “that if, by any possible means, young men could come to realize how much they sink in the estimation of young women by appearing with cigar or pipe in their mouths, they would gladly take themselves and their tobacco to some safe hiding place.”

According to complaints registered with Ariel, the Minnesota Daily, and at the president’s and dean of students’ offices, smokers continued to practice their habit in public places on the campus, despite periodic reminders that they were offending others. A thick file in the papers of the University president contains letters of complaint from students, parents, faculty, and campus maintenance staff about the stink of smoking, the general unseemliness of smokers, and the mess of cigarette butts left behind on campus walkways and throughout buildings.

The University post office was another gathering spot for smokers who would light up as they thumbed through their morning mail; as was the Publication Building, where the young journalists at the Daily were notorious smoking fiends. Smoking during football games at Northrop Field brought a number of protests to the Daily, “from ladies stating that they will not attend the game as long as they are compelled to have cigarette smoke puffed into their faces from two or three sides of them, and when they are compelled to sit on seats where some man—a term used merely to designate the being from other animals—has been spitting tobacco.”

Attitudes and autopsies

Sentiments supporting the rights of smokers were rarely voiced in public journals, but those sentiments’ existence is evidenced by continued smoking both in acceptable forums—like University-sanctioned, male-only gatherings called “smokers”—and in the buildings and on the sidewalks of the very campus where it was supposed to be banned.

Ski-U-Mah editor Ted Peterson in the 1941 Gopher

A sort of wink-and-a-nod attitude toward the prohibition is suggested in an editorial comment from The Minnesota Alumni Weekly in 1908: “The University smoke ordinance which was first promulgated several years ago and which has been in force with greater or less exception since that date has been re-announced by the President for the present year. . . . Now if the ordinance could only be made to includthe University heating plant everyone would be happy. . . . There is not, in the City of Minneapolis, a worse offender than the University, in respect to the smoke ordinance.”

Ten years later, the Alumni Weekly published a flurry of complaints about smoking in Folwell Hall, which prompted a letter from Oscar Firkins, the esteemed professor of English. Firkins tried to walk something of a middle ground in the war between smokers and nonsmokers. Firkins was, he wrote, “not actively hostile on the question of the use of tobacco in the Men’s Union.” And in this time of World War, he had no “sympathy with the proposal to bar tobacco from the soldiers.

South Dakota) to enact what turned out to be an ineffective prohibition on the sale of cigarettes. The ban lasted just four years in the state and had little impact on tobacco’s usage at the University or elsewhere.

The ill effects of smoking on health were widely acknowledged but not deeply studied in the first 20 years of the new century. Tobacco use was linked to heart disease, blood vessel constriction, and kidney problems. It was associated with shortness of breath, loss of taste, cancer of the throat, and tuberculosis. The New England Life Insurance Company printed actuary tables that showed elevated levels of

Evelyn Petersen and Glenn Galles at a University event, from the 1941 Gopher

early mortality for moderate smokers. A number of well-known

Americans, including Thomas Edison, fulminated against cigarette smokers. In Edison’s case, he claimed that cigarette smoking caused a “degeneration of the cells of the brain,” an allegation that led him not to employ anyone who smoked cigarettes.

The association between lung cancer and smoking was unmentioned in antismoking circles because it was unknown in the early 20th century. In fact, lung cancer was so rare in 1900 that many medical texts failed even to mention it. One of the first alarms raised by the increasing presence of this deadly illness was sounded at the University of Minnesota.

During a study of autopsies performed at the University Hospital between 1899 and 1918, Dr. Moses Barron (M.D. ’11) reported that lung cancer was the cause of death in only four cases out of 3,399. He subsequently discovered that between 1919 and 1921, deaths attributed to lung cancer jumped 800 percent, to nine cases in 1,033 autopsies. While it would take many years before a concrete link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was declared with scientific certainty, suspicions about the epidemic’s source were quick to come. Associations between lung problems and smoking were already well-known. The great increase in numbers of cigarette smokers in the 1880s and 1890s coincided with the sharply rising numbers of lung cancer victims 20 or 30 years later. This span would turn out to be a typical gestation period for lung cancer; those who began smoking in the 1880s and ’90s fit neatly into the cohort of lung cancer victims counted by Barron between 1919 and 1921. By the 1970s, this form of cancer, which had been so rare mere decades earlier,

George Larsen, the Minnesota Daily business manager from the 1924 Gopher.

was the number-one cancer killer in the western world.

Worse than dancing

Even as Dr. Barron was counting lung cancer victims in the morgue, in another corner of the University, the Department of Agriculture was perfecting one of the very first chain-smoking machines designed to identify and isolate the various chemicals heading into a smoker’s lungs from a bank of cigars and cigarettes.

At the same time, a highly regarded physics professor, Anthony Zeleny, was leading his own determined fight against the use of tobacco. Zeleny was executive director of the state of Minnesota’s No-Tobacco League, a national organization formed to combat smoking and chewing habits. Zeleny, it turned out, was also a staunch foe of alcohol and dancing, facts that tended to undercut his impact among young people in the era of bathtub gin and the Charleston.

Still, his credentials as a scientist and his position at the No-Tobacco League gave him visibility in the smoking debate, and he used his forum to lead the fight against tobacco use in Minnesota for more than 20 years. Zeleny’s battles took place in an era when the rationales for smoking held a stronger sway than they do today.

In a 1936 address to the national No-Tobacco League convention, Zeleny listed some of the assertions made by smokers and tobacco companies on behalf of the habit. Many sound familiar today: “That the amount of nicotine in smoking is too small to be of consequence; that the increases in pulse rate and blood pressure due to smoking have no more significance than the increases due to exercise; that tobacco has a dietetic value in changing the stored glycogen of the liver and muscles into available sugar; that many great scholars are smokers; that the tobacco habit is not a narcotic

Paul Kepple, Art Gustafson, and Herbert Lerud, Delta Sigma Pi fraternity members, from the 1942 Gopher

addiction, but is purely psychologic and can be broken as easily as any other established habit; that smoking aids digestion; that smokers become immune to the ill effects of tobacco; and that research had not shown injury to result from a moderate use of tobacco.”

In a section of his address titled “Conditions in a Large University,” Zeleny hints at some of the difficulties faced at the University of Minnesota in combating these claims, accusing tobacco and business interests of using “advertising agents . . . hired students” to promote the use of cigarettes on campus, principally by the act of smoking and doling out free smokes to whomever asked. More odious still was the fact that tobacco companies were singling out medical students as an “ultra-desirable group” of smokers.

Women on campus, too, were “reached by agents who, unrecognized as such, have become members of sororities and other groups.” Again, the presumption was that the act of smoking itself would encourage the habit among co-eds. Zeleny estimated that half of the students at his “large university” were smokers, a number that, even if it were exaggerated, suggests the continuing difficulties the University administration had in enforcing no-smoking rules on campus. For the generation of students who came to the U of M between the world wars, the paternalism of the administration seemed a little Paleolithic— an attitude that would prompt the most defiant act of smoking in the University’s history.

The Salisbury rendition

Future New York Times editor and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Harrison Salisbury (B.A. ’30) was editor of the Minnesota Daily in January 1930 when University President Lotus Coffman, responding to complaints about smoking in the University Library, issued a ruling that banned the activity. Editorial comments in the Daily suggested that Coffman had little authority

From the 1954 Gopher

to make his declaration, speculating: “what can the University do about it?” Salisbury, who years later would describe himself as “a person who [tended] to be against the conventional way,” decided to challenge the administration in as direct a way as possible. Just a few days later, he lit up a cigarette in the library. Two campus employees, designated by Coffman to keep an eye out for smokers, fingered Salisbury, and a couple of days later, Harold Nicholson, the dean of students, acted. The editor of the Daily was suspended for a full school year. The dean, defending his drastic punishment, said it was due to the “deliberateness and publicity of the defiance.”

Praise for Nicholson’s actions came from alumni, editorial writers, and public officials from around the state. The Waseca Herald, the Minneapolis Journal, and the Willmar Daily Tribune all gave the dean their blessings, as did—in letters to Nicholson—a pastor from Austin, Minnesota; the St. Anthony Falls Study Club; and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, among others. The fact that the expulsion was reported in both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune suggests that the problem of insolent smokers on campus was not unique to Minnesota.

But if anyone in the administration thought the problem had ended with Salisbury’s expulsion, they were sadly mistaken. Just weeks later, the University was forced to print a reminder of its no smoking policy on all campus program materials, from basketball games to concerts.

It had been pointed out that visitors to the University, including alumni, sports fans, and art mavens, were flouting the no-smoking

Freshmen picnickers, from the 1962 Gopher

rule at campus events. How would it look for the University to boot one of its students and yet let smoking continue during basketball games?

In fact the administration’s heart wasn’t in an all-out war against smoking. Even Salisbury, who was a senior at the time of his suspension, got a second chance. A few weeks after being booted, he was quietly given the opportunity to fulfill the requirements for his graduation that spring and left the U none the worse for his defiance.

For the next 10 to 15 years, the cat-and-mouse game between smokers and those committed to snuffing the habit out continued at the U. By the time World War II veterans began rolling onto the campus, the notion that the administration could treat these ex-soldiers with the sort of discipline that had worked with the beanie-clad students of an earlier generation was passé. The new attitude was that if smoking was a nuisance to some, too bad; if it posed health risks to the smoker, that was his problem and his alone. In March 1946, the head of the University Library, E.W. McDiarmid, wrote a note to President James Morrill asking the administration to rescind its order against smoking in the library building. No one was terribly interested in enforcing a rule that seemed made to be broken. Morrill agreed. It was as good an indicator as any that a smoking culture was ascendant at the U and across the country.

Irrefutable dangers

In November 1964, University President O. Meredith Wilson sent out a notice to faculty: “We have been reminded again by students and others that the University policy prohibiting smoking in classrooms is not being enforced,” the letter began.

In October 1970, President Malcolm Moos sent out the exact same letter. In October 1974, the duty fell to the vice president of operations: “Current University

Electrical engineering students taking a break, from the 1962 Gopher

policy prohibits smoking in classrooms,” he wrote. “Please make sure your students don’t smoke in classrooms.”

Cigarettes had always had a certain rebellious allure for young people; the social changes in the 1960s only fueled it. A 1963 letter from a faculty member to the president’s office complained about “the beatnik types” who smoked during the movies shown at the Bell Museum by the U Film Society.

Lighting up openly in a classroom or theater—be it a cigarette or a joint—was a way of openly challenging authority. The sense of liberty at the root of this impulse, however, would soon run headlong into the counterclaims of those who demanded the right to be free from smoke. These antismokers were bolstered by a new recognition that the dangers of tobacco were irrefutable.

The release in early 1964 of “The Report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health” marked the beginning of a new era in the battle against smoking.

The 10-member commission, composed of some of the most eminent health professionals in the country, presented that examined more than 8,000 prior reports and papers on the subject of smoking and came to the simple conclusion that cigarettes shortened lives. The habit was linked to numerous forms of cancer, including lung cancer, and was a factor in heart disease, emphysema, bronchitis, and other illnesses.

The 1964 report generated enormous publicity and prompted some of the first concerted efforts at public “smoke-outs” and educational programs to inform smokers of the hazards of cigarettes. Its recommendations led to the Surgeon General’s Warning on each pack of cigarettes sold in the United States, as well as the ban on television advertising of cigarettes.

Among the members of the commission

Alpha Gamma Delta sorority sisters sing and socialize, from the 1966 Gopher.

was Dr. Leonard Schuman of the University of Minnesota. Schuman was a professor at the U of M’s School of Public Health and one of the leading epidemiologists in the nation. The founder of the U of M’s doctoral program in epidemiology, Schuman continued to work with the surgeon general’s advisory committee for several years after the report. Schuman, who started his position on the commission with a pack-a-day smoking habit, ended it by pitching his cigarettes in the trash.

That was not an uncommon response; smoking rates in the nation began to decline immediately after the report’s release. Not only did millions of people begin to examine the habit more closely, but the surgeon general’s report also brought smoking into the realm of public policy. With the warning on cigarette packages and federal controls on advertising, the fight against tobacco products began to be waged in larger arenas than campus libraries and post offices. The state of Minnesota itself became the next major battleground.

Breathing free

In 1975 the Minnesota State Legislature enacted the first Clean Indoor Air Act in the nation, prohibiting smoking in public places and at public meetings. Smoking would be allowed only in private offices and designated areas. Restaurants and other large public venues were to have designated smoking and nonsmoking areas. If no-smoking signs were not posted, the presumption was that smoking was prohibited.

At the U of M, an informal poll conducted by the Daily just after the law’s enactment suggested that it was extremely popular. Ninety-four percent of nonsmokers on campus approved of the ban; even smokers themselves, 88 percent,

Jerry Sprau and Bob Butler at a smoker, from the 1967 Gopher

thought it was a good idea. In the winter of 1976, University police began writing citations for violators of the act and by April had issued 20 tickets, almost all of them at Williams Arena.

Over the following years, the evidence against smoking mounted into an Everest of health concerns. At the same time, nonsmokers, health advocates, and people who simply found smoking a nuisance became bolder in asserting their right to be free of smoke. In 1984, the Coffman Memorial Union board of governors voted to phase out smoking at Coffman—a process that ultimately took seven years, but it signaled a wider trend toward making individual buildings smoke-free.

The entire University of Minnesota–Morris campus went smokeless in December 1992, and eight months later, so did all campus facilities in the Twin Cities.

Battles between smokers and nonsmokers continue to flare—most recently due to the state law smoking ban in bars and restaurants that went into effect October 1 of this year—but, in fact, one didn’t have to hear the cheers at the Metrodome when the no-smoking announcement was made to know that bans were extremely popular. The number of Harrison Salisburys willing to step forward and assert the rights of smokers on the University of Minnesota campus has dwindled to the occasional scofflaw, and the campus has essentially returned to the smoking policy with which it began. As President Cyrus Northrop stated 112 years ago, “We do not want smoking on the campus.”

Tim Brady is a St. Paul-based freelance writer and frequent contributor to Minnesota.