“We know that obesity and its co-morbidities are going to rob individuals of quality and quantity of life. What good is it to go through college, get your bachelor’s degree at Lincoln University, go get your graduate degree, work for five, six, seven years, and all of a sudden, you experience a catastrophic health issue associated with obesity? That would be a tragedy. We believe that it’s our professional educators’ responsibility to alert students to this.”

—dr. james deboy (chair, department of health, physical education and recreation, lincoln university), explaining the rationale behind lincoln’s stance that students with body mass indexes exceeding 30 will not be able to graduate unless they take a one-credit gym class

you know, even though i disagree with the approach (using BMI as a concrete indicator of health is about as reliable as delonte west), the implementation (how much will one walking class really help someone in dire need of dietary assistance?), the hypocrisy (from what i’ve read, the only green thing you’ll find in a lincoln university cafeteria is lemon-lime kool-aid) the jar of stigma and discrimination worms this opens up, and the fact that a select group of students are being required to do something that would actually benefit the entire population, i actually don’t think that lincoln university’s idea is a bad one. Continue reading →