Off Beat: Clark College professor’s theory goes up in smoke

Clark College is justifiably proud of its pioneering status as a no-smoking campus.In 2005, Clark became the first public college in Washington to abolish the use of tobacco.
Clark was also a national leader as one of just 25 colleges in the country to become tobacco-free.
And, Clark was the second community college in the U.S. to take that step, according to Rebecca Wale, environmental health manager.
... Which must have been an interesting turn of events for some former Clark students. It wasn’t just that tobacco was tolerated at Clark for decades. In 1946, it became part of a classroom exercise.
Echoes of that era popped up in The Columbian’s archives in a story about Tony Bacon, longtime Vancouver newsman who died in September.
In the story, Bacon recalled enrolling in Clark College as a 16-year-old in 1946. It was just after World War II, and many of Bacon’s classmates were veterans who were going back to school on the G.I. Bill.
Homer Foster, who taught history and social sciences, liked to conduct experiments in class. His classes were filled with veterans, and half of them were smokers.
Foster had heard that smoking impaired reasoning abilities, Bacon related. Foster set about to test this point on the first day of the quarter. The professor divided his students into smokers and non-smokers, and handed out an exam.
When the results were in, the professor was amazed at the results: The smokers had way better grades than the non-smokers, Bacon said.
"Poor old Homer Foster decided then and there that he should become a smoker," Bacon told the writer.
"He wasn’t very adept at it, but he kept puffing away because of the results of this hysterical experiment."
Hatching a penguin
There’s another bit of irony in the no-smoking policy: Clark College might owe its "Penguin Nation" identity to something that has been banned from campus.
According to one story, the roots of the school’s mascot could be traced to a Clark College student who swiped a mechanical penguin from a promotional display at a local drug store.
As the story goes, the pilfered penguin advertised Kool cigarettes.