Revolt at Washington

The physical examination of freshmen coeds at the University of Washington early last week seemed to be proceeding quite as usual. The girls answered questions, had their blood pressures taken, got weighed, thumped and Xrayed. Then came a procedure that took some of the girls by surprise. One by one, they were ushered into a private room. There, as they stood naked before a camera, a woman attendant took three full-length photographs--front, back and profile. In the rush, attendants did not have time to explain to everyone what all the photographing was for.

Later, some girls began to wonder. They told their parents, and the parents began wondering too. Why were the nude pictures taken and what would become of them? By midweek, angry parents had swamped the office of President Raymond B. Allen with protests.

President Allen acted with dispatch. He impounded the 852 negatives, locked them up and suspended all photographing. But he was not in time to silence the howls. Newspapers picked up the story, splashed it into headlines (NUDE POSING OF COEDS RISES STORM . . .). To a good many readers, the whole affair sounded like some sort of campus peep show.

Body & Temperament. Actually, there was a longer explanation. As the week passed, other colleges and universities, including Barnard, Smith and Harvard, acknowledged that they also took such photographs, and that some of them had been doing so for 20 years as part of the work of the physical education department. Most schools said they used the photos to point up posture defects to the student himself. Others--with the University of Washington planning to participate this year--turned the pictures over to Psychologist William H. Sheldon, 50, of Columbia University's medical school.

Psychologist Sheldon (TIME, July 15, 1940) has never made any mystery of what he was up to: for 25 years he has been studying the relationship, if any, between physique and temperament. Though they probably never knew it, thousands of students from at least 30 colleges and universities have been duly classified as endomorphs (round, soft, usually physically weak), mesomorphs (square, hard, unusually rugged), ectomorphs (fragile, spindly, stringy), or a combination of types. He has written three books on his findings, has two more in the works.

Prediction & Reaction. According to Dr. Sheldon, a blend of "morphs" himself, people's temperaments are apt to fit their physiques.* Endomorphs are likely to be amiable and slow; mesomorphs, vigorous and aggressive; ectomorphs, inhibited and cautious. Further, he has found his types particularly susceptible to certain diseases, e.g., mesomorphs to acute appendicitis. Usually, says Sheldon, a person's physique can help indicate what sort of reaction he will have under stress, what sort of diet he needs, what sort of work he will excel in.

All this long ago won the respect of Sheldon's scientific colleagues. But to protesting parents at the University of Washington, science seemed to be going too far. In fact, science seemed to be invading the privacy of mankind. In the face of the storm, President Allen admitted that staffwomen had been guilty of a blunder at least: they had not fully explained to the girls why they were posing or that the posing was voluntary.

At week's end, Dr. Allen took all 852 negatives to a university furnace room and chucked them into the flames.

* Sheldon's idea goes back as far as Hippocrates, who classified physiques into two types: phthisic habhus (long and thin) and apoplectic habitus (short and thick).

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