Lincoln U. Freshmen Forced to Weigh In and Take Classes Accordingly

By Kelly Turner on December 2nd, 2009

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This makes me want to cry.

At Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, freshman will be required to step on the scale the moment they step on campus. If the student has a BMI over 30, they will be required to take a course entitled “Fitness or Life.” Students can graduate the course by reducing his or her BMI, or by playing a sport.

It doesn’t make me want to cry because we’ve had to take such drastic measures to help curb the obesity epidemic. It makes me want to cry because people think that publicly weighing young women, and then classifying them accordingly, is a good idea.

I disagree with this from a fitness professional’s standpoint on many levels. To start, BMI (Body Mass Index) has been largely dismissed as an inaccurate way to measure health and body composition for some time. It’s just a height/weight ratio that classifies larger people as unhealthy and thinner people as ideal. We know this isn’t accurate, and forcing college age adults into classes based only on this information is ridiculous.

In addition, losing weight takes time. It takes developing new habits and dropping old ones. It takes finding out what caused you to gain the weight in the first place, and then deciding to make a change. Simply put: sticking someone in a class and telling them they can’t get out until they lose weight is unrealistic. And it just promotes quick weight loss which, research shows, leads to yo-yo dieting and temporary results.

What really disturbs me about this, though, is thinking about how I would have reacted at that age. Not me now, but the 18-year-old me. Or, more precisely, the 18-year-old severely bulimic me. Now I am healthy, happy and have devoted my life to health and fitness, but when I was younger, I was the typical middle-class, overachieving, perfectionist eating disordered girl.

It was my struggle, and my struggle alone. I had issues that stemmed from my childhood that were only known to the public through my protruding hip bones and sunken cheeks. No one knew my situation, and no one knew my thought process — and yet a seemingly innocent comment or look was enough to send me into a tailspin of self destruction.

A college that thinks they can stick everyone on a scale, fat or thin, and have it effect everyone in a “for your information” way is both naive and dangerous. Eating disorders run rampant on college campuses, and to force everyone to weigh in and then classify them into categories will do so much damage it scares me.

Last I checked, where you attend college is a decision. Does Lincoln University really think overweight people are going to attend their school when they know they will be publicly categorized as “too fat” and told they must lose weight before they are able to choose all their classes like the rest of the students?