POSTURE

Every year Mr. Fradd photographs the Freshman class and picks out the round-shouldered from their straighter-backed fellows. About one in five of the residents of the Yard join his posture class, that innocuous gathering which spends six weeks in corrective exercises. Mr. Fradd is an experienced practitioner, several of the larger New England private schools have engaged his services in order to teach their pupils to hold their noses up, and his success in that field has been marked. In his six weeks of Freshman training he does as much as is possible to untwist scholarly spines and set shoulders level, but can any man correct an individual body in six weeks?

At New Haven the correction classes are continued until the student's posture measures up to the normal standard. There is no arbitrary period of six weeks; indeed, six days or six years would be equally efficacious if the desired results could not be obtained. The Harvard class lacks individual attention, a feature in the Yale course. To prescribe the same medicine for a hundred odd men seems aimlessly general, considering the innumerable variations among individual physiques.

When Mr. Fradd takes a private school class in hand not only is he given opportunity to diagnose each man individually, but has sufficient time to make actual progress in correcting the student's posture, an impossibility in the brief, crowded Freshman posture class. On paper, this course may seem to take care of the University's responsibility to the student's health, but in reality it is little more than a noble gesture. If the course is to be compulsory, it should be continued until the desired results are obtained, until each man has acquired a passable posture. If Mr. Fradd's funds are insufficient, he should be granted a larger appropriation. The present course must be resuscitated or abolished.