Posts tagged with lifestyle.
Universities should be able to teach the body
It's agreed that universities are in the business of teaching, taking young people and transforming them into the adult leaders of society.
It is accepted that as part of their teaching missions, universities can require students to expose their minds to ideas, no matter how offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to the student.
However, once the university decides to teach the body, the howls of protest are heard around the world.
Lincoln University in the United States discovered this when they dared enforce a requirement that obese students take a mandatory healthy living course which involves physical exercise and lessons in healthy eating. Students with a BMI (body mass index) above 30 and a waist measurement greater than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men were required to take the course "Fitness for Life" prior to graduation. Much like academic requirements requiring students to diversify their electives among different subjects, students who refused to take the course could not graduate regardless of their overall academic performance.
The requirement was implemented in 2006 and so this is the first year with a large number of potential graduates who need to fulfill the requirement. Naturally, some of these students are rebelling against the course, saying it is their choice what they do with their body.
Judging by media coverage of the controversy domestically and even overseas, there is a large segment of the population who agree with them: the university has no place telling students what to do with their bodies.
This is wrong: the university has every right to set the curriculum and students have every right to attend another university if they do not agree with it.
What started with separate news and opinion pieces in the campus newspaper The Lincolnian quickly spread into a world-wide media circus with newspaper headlines screaming about fat students not being allowed to graduate.
It is no secret that North American society faces an obesity problem.
Generally speaking, universities are one of the worst offenders in contributing to this problem. One only needs to visit campus food services to see why our society has a problem; be it gravy soaked fries, deep fried chicken, or super-sized fountain drinks, higher education does not promote healthy eating habits. (To say nothing of the Red Bull-fuelled all-night study sessions)
It is worth noting the unusual nature of Lincoln University. The historically black institution was founded with the name Ashmun Institute in 1854, when it was the first university in the world providing higher education for black people, a lower class living in a racist society. The university did not exist solely to educate the elites and maintain the status quo. Founded to better the lives of black people, the university has been activist since its founding.
It was a noble ambition for the faculty at Lincoln University to address the obesity issue head-on by implementing an academic requirement that students who are obese take the Fitness for Life course as one of their electives to graduate. But the university should have gone further and made the course mandatory for all students.
The failure to extend this requirement to all students is a partial reason for its downfall. Following the world-wide media firestorm, the Lincoln University faculty met earlier this month and cancelled the BMI requirement completely. The university will continue to offer the "Fitness for Life" course as an optional elective and address obesity health risk topics in its mandatory "Dimensions of Wellness" course, which is a required course for all Lincoln students.
Canadian universities could learn from Lincoln's example. While they implemented the idea poorly, they are right: universities need to address the problem of obesity. Not by targeting the obese, but by targeting the real problem: poor lifestyles and eating habits. Many universities have implemented mandatory writing courses for first-year students to address the epidemic of poor writing. It's time for mandatory lifestyle courses to address the medical epidemic that's a ticking time bomb for my generation.
Mens sana in corpore sano.
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university,
students,
lincoln,
lifestyle,
obesity
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JOEY COLEMAN