I am not one to get in anybody’s business. I have the right to live my life as I see fit, and so do you. So does everybody! It makes me upset when I see people in power try and control the way that others live their lives.
I’m sure that the administration of Lincoln University really had good intentions when they made the policy that requires their graduates to have a BMI lower than 30.
Yep, that’s right. If you’re a member of the class of 2010, you can’t graduate from Lincoln University with a BMI greater than 30. Students who find themselves in this predicament are forced to take a fitness class that meets for three hours per week. Those who are assigned to take the class but don’t complete it are not allowed to graduate.
But good intentions aside, this is not the way to help obese students. Take it from me, a former obese man. Many people wanted to help me when I was obese. A few people even offered help in some way or another and I shut them all out. I was too afraid and ashamed of what I had become to let someone help me. Obesity is just like any other addiction problem. It can’t be cured until the afflicted person is ready to help his self.
I applaud the officials at Lincoln for trying to help their students with their problems. And according to them, the rules are all about helping their students maximize their potential. According to one administrator:
We, as educators, must tell students when we believe, in our heart of hearts, when certain factors, certain behaviors, attitudes, whatever, are going to hinder that student from achieving and maximizing their life goals.
But I wish that someone on the panel who helped make that decision would have thought of a better alternative. Alienating and ostracizing is not the way to help someone achieve and maximize their life goals.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I doubt this policy will last. Although the vast majority of overweight people are in that predicament because of their own bad habits, there are some people who really can’t do much about their weight (one of my relatives has been struggling with this her whole life). I’m pretty sure this violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, and someone will probably point that out with a lawsuit.
Matt–I agree. I’m torn between the good intentions of the administration and the total buffoonery regarding their implementation of the plan. And yes, I bet a lawsuit will come out of this before it is over.
Brigid–Yep, one of the main points I was trying to make was that obese people (and ANYONE else addicted to ANYTHING else) can’t be forced into getting help. Hopefully, one day, the light will click on in their head like it did in mine and there will be no turning back–they will help themselves
That’s freaking brutal and stupid! What these people don’t realize is that you can’t make someone lose weight until they are ready. For now it just serves to alienate them further from the “skinny” people. And of course we all want to be like them because they are so cool and well adjusted and everything is perfect for them – right??! NOT!
Are you kidding me? That’s nuts! Talk about the last acceptable form of harassment.
Wow..I’m speechless. Even more evidence to suggest that thinner, slimmer, (and maybe healthier) people will move forward in life while those who are stuck or rolling backwards will be kept back and have less opportunities to succeed.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, body image issues are no joke. As there is an epidemic of obesity in this country, there’s also an epidemic of eating disorders (among both men and women). People kill themselves because they think they’re fat: Karen Carpenter. You’ve got to be careful about how you approach this.
On the other hand, there are externalities associated with individual behavior. Your second-hand smoke hurts my children. Illness associated with obesity creates costs that everyone pays — through higher health insurance premiums, Medicaid taxes, hospital reimbursements for emergency room care. If I’m paying, I’m entitled to a say.
I’ve seen better approaches than this, though — for example, insurance surcharges for obese group health plan enrollees, and cash incentives for meeting weight-loss targets. One problem here is the same problem that permeates the health care business: the complete disconnection between what one pays and the benefits one receives. At the moment, although obesity imposes a cost on others, obese people don’t actually pay a higher portion of that cost than healthy-weight people. But social censure just don’t work — it doesn’t work for abstinence, for example.
If I was an institution intent on changing attitudes or behavior that “are going to hinder that student from achieving and maximizing their life goals,” I’m not sure I’d start with weight loss anyway.
I have been offended by this policy ever since I heard about it a few days ago. The bottom line is that it is totally inappropriate to discriminate in this manner. If health and fitness is a concern (and that is a legitimate concern), then every student should be required to take a fitness class (or equivalent) in order to graduate. That actually was a requirement at my university, and I graduated over 20 years ago. (Even so, I am sure there was some process to waive the requirement due to health reasons.) Here are some of the other problems I see with this policy. First, college (which you are PAYING FOR), is for education (unless I guess you are a P.E. major), and your fitness or health or weight has no bearing on your intelligence or your ability to learn. Second, the only way to determine which students qualify under this policy is to weigh them. How degrading! Third, BMI is not a good indication of health and fitness. Muscle weight can give a higher BMI in a very fit person. I know this, because I am very fit, and my BMI fluctuates above and below 25 (standard for “overweight”) depending on how much salt I’ve eaten and whether or not I am dehydrated! Fourth, although the 30 level for obese sounds high, it really doesn’t take much to get there. Taking myself as an example, as a 5’5″ female I would have a 30 BMI if I weighed 180 pounds. I can guarantee that if I weighed 180 pounds (which is 30 pounds more than I do), nobody would say I was obese. The range between “normal” and “obese” is only 30 pounds! Fifth (and finally), thin does not mean healthy and plenty of skinny people are overfat (meaning too much body fat) and underfit. So by basing this standard only on weight (which is really only what BMI considers, along with height of course), it is really a policy based only on appearance, not health. And that is just completely offensive. (Which is where I believe I started many words back!)
Kristin–You make a good point about paying for an education, not for being fit. You also make good points about BMI being a terrible measure of fitness. However, I’m betting that there aren’t many body builders with BMI’s higher than 30 at Lincoln University who are not being graduated. Still, I think there are much better methods of creating a culture of fitness, especially at a university populated by young and energetic people, that could resonate throughout the community and spill over into the obese population of the school.
Greenman–I wonder why the health insurance businesses are so different from the life insurance businesses? About a year ago, Pam and I purchased some life insurance and they sent a nurse to our house for a full battery of tests–including height and weight. The results of those tests were then factored in to how much we paid for our life insurance. Needless to say, I was really glad that I had started my getting fit slowly routine earlier because making my wife pay more for life insurance because I was fat would have been one more piece of guilty pie on my plate. It seems like health insurance companies would be able to charge more money for people who are going to need more services, regardless of the origins of those services.
Andrew–I totally agree!
Why target just the obese? Why not smokers, drinkers etc.?
My college (Williams) has a similarly bizarre policy: you can’t graduate unless you can swim halfway down the pool and back. Students who don’t know how to swim (for the most part, poor students who didn’t have access to pools and those from other countries where pools are not as common) have to take a swim class. This policy is hundreds of years old, though, so it doesn’t come under too much fire even though it’s weird.
Unreal. The rules/requirements should be for everyone. Not for a specific class or target. That’s discrimination.
Schools in general are just a joke and a waste of money. Schools are nothing but broken promises and dreams. They teach people nothing of real value. The only thing schools teach is how to be subservient under a “one world government”. No free thinking, no creativity, no independence in schools.
Better off using the internet for learning and education. You learn a lot more than being inside the box. A degree/dipolma is nothing but a piece of paper.