Computers, depending on how they are used, can be both a boon and a menace to health and performance. With the increasing presence of computers on campus, journalism educators must make sure they are not creating a new class of disabled persons among their students and disabling themselves in the process. Journalism schools across the United States are increasingly equipped with computer technology, with more and more tasks carried out via computer. Experience in professional newsrooms, first in Australia in the 1980s, and then in the United States, shows that rapid computerization was followed by an epidemic of repetitive strain injuries. Schools or departments of journalism have felt immune to the epidemic, reasoning that neither students nor professors spend as much time at computers as do working journalists. However, evidence from several journalism schools (such as Columbia and the University of Florida) indicates that the problem is developing, that nobody talks about it much, and that ergonomics (human engineering for the workplace) belongs in the classroom. Some universities have attempted to prevent cases of repetitive strain injury by equipping computer labs with ergonomically correct workstations and chairs, but sometimes funding for computers is easier to come by than funding for furniture. Both students and working professionals worry about future job discrimination because of past medical history. (Twenty notes are included.) (SR)