We’ve already told you that Lincoln University, the country’s first historically black institution, was also one of the first colleges to mandate a health class for fat students. As it turns out, they’ve decided two dozen critically overweight students won’t graduate for ditching the program.
Located in Oxford, Pennsylvania, the university established a program a few years ago called “Fitness for Life”, a semester-long course aimed at educating students with a high body mass index about the risks linked to obesity as well as on how to obtain a healthier weight. But about two dozen students who tipped the scales as freshman opted to ditch the class, sparking a contentious debate on how large of a role the institution should play in the health choices of its student body.
While the black community suffers disproportionately from nutrition-related illnesses and diseases (for example, about 12 percent of African-Americans over 18 have been diagnosed with diabetes, compared to 1.8 percent of whites), the Daily Beast’s Elizabeth Gates argues the university should grant its fatter students a degree:
Without implementing educational health resources in primary and secondary inner city schools, collegiate-based programs like “Fitness for Life” will always be questioned—or in the case of the two dozen students at Lincoln, downright ignored.
Lincoln University is an HBCU (historically black college) where much of the student population is uninformed about health and nutrition. To mandate the program strictly for overweight students is both short-sighted and insulting. In other words, thick-headed.
Speaking of fat in higher education, George Washington University will grant the first-ever doctoral degree in fat studies to a student whose thesis examines why authors choose to make certain characters overweight, leading some academics to wonder when fat studies will come to a university near you.