Advertising has long mirrored student life, priorities, and current culture, and over the past century, The Triangle’s pages have captured the shifting rhythms of Drexel University. From elegant dances to questionable tobacco ads and later community-oriented campaigns, the ads that ran tell a comprehensive story of what students valued at different moments in time.
In its early decades, The Triangle frequently promoted large-scale social events that defined campus life. Among the most prominent was the Cap and Ball, a formal vaudeville-style dance that blended theatrical performances with live music and elaborate dress. Often advertised weeks in advance, the Cap and Ball was a major social highlight that drew students, faculty, and guests into a carefully staged evening of entertainment.
The Freshman–Senior Dance also symbolized the structured social hierarchy of early campus life, offering one of the few sanctioned opportunities for underclassmen and upperclassmen to mingle. Similarly, prom advertisements emphasized tradition and courtship.
Over time, these events faded from campus calendars as student culture became less formal, gender norms shifted, and large, university-sponsored dances gave way to smaller, student-led gatherings. Although they are no longer held, these events marked an era when social unity and spectacle were central to the collegiate experience.
As the paper grew, so did the scale and strangeness of its advertisements. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, The Triangle regularly ran massive, half-page ads for Camel cigarettes and Prince Albert tobacco. Impossible to miss, they often featured bold illustrations, confident slogans, and claims about smoothness, relaxation, and even health. In hindsight, their sheer size and frequency feel almost absurd, especially in a student newspaper. At the time, however, tobacco companies aggressively targeted young adults, and college campuses were seen as ideal spaces to cultivate lifelong consumers. The amount of valuable space that these ads occupied spoke to the financial power of tobacco companies and how smoking was normalized in everyday life.
However, this dominance did not last. By the mid-1950s, new scientific evidence began linking smoking to serious health risks, including lung cancer and heart disease. As public awareness grew, cigarette sales declined, and regulations tightened. Tobacco advertising gradually disappeared from The Triangle, marking a broader cultural revolution with health and corporate responsibility. The loss of these ads represented both a shift in newspapers’ revenue streams and a redefinition of what was considered acceptable to promote to students.
In the decades that followed, The Triangle’s advertising landscape shifted toward events and initiatives that emphasized school spirit and civic engagement. Ads for athletic events became increasingly common, rallying students to support Drexel teams and fostering a sense of shared identity. Blood drives and health-related campaigns also took center stage, reflecting both advances in medical knowledge and a growing emphasis on community service. These ads signaled a clear change in priorities from consumption to participation.
Over the past 100 years, the ads in The Triangle have charted the evolution of Drexel student life. Whether promoting grand dances, tobacco products, or campus-wide service efforts, each era’s advertisements reveal what mattered most at the time. Together, they form a historical record not just of marketing trends, but of changing values, cultural norms, and the ever-evolving relationship between students and the world around them.