Too Fat to Graduate?

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Where I am coming from is that any problem or lack of comfort I derive from my obesity is not nearly as unpleasant as spending the rest of my life focused on what I eat, when I eat and how much I move.

Simply put, I wouldn't mind slimming down but I am not willing to put in the effort required to do so. It would require a complete change of lifestyle something I do not feel like doing. To put it simply, I am a lazy lazy person and comfortable with that.

 

I'm already eating very little and going hungry most of the time. I would need more exercise to drop any weight, but only time exertion doesn't cause me to curl up in pain that surpasses any words is when I'm possessed by a bloodthirsty rage. And even then I'm just shrugging off the pain - I'll still be feeling it.

There's a cure, but that needs surgery that is apparently still far away.

 

very questionable move. Imo obese people have enough problems already, without extra singling them out at university. Sure, it may be meant good, but the way they do it is just wrong.

 

Don't most colleges and universities already *have* a PhysEd requirement? I've attended two, and both required undergraduates to take four semesters of physical education. I always assumed the PhysEd requirement was just a money maker, because all PhysEd courses were worth one credit, and your tuition was based on the number of credits you took.

If you cannot swim, then you were required to take swimming to fulfill your physical education requirement. Presumably, after taking the course, you would now know how to swim.

I'm pretty sure it was 200 meters. It was an olympic sized pool, so I'm assuming it was 50 meters, and you had to go four lengths of the pool, so that's 200 meters. I do not think they are using the test to show you are physically fit. As you said, given that the length isn't particularly long, and there is no time limit associated with it, you don't have to be in good shape to do it. I think the reasoning is, as you also mentioned, that swimming is a vital skill to learn. You seemed to imply that learning to swim was mandatory to learn in elementary school - there is no such requirement in the US, which is probably because most elementary schools don't have pools.

That's definitely true. In American football, practically every athlete on the field will be considered overweight or obese. (Granted, in the case of the offensive linemen they would be considered obese because they ARE obese, but even the ones that aren't fat would be considered obese because of their muscle mass.)

As for having to take a course if you are obese, I don't see it as that big of a deal. (Perhaps this is because my BMI is not in excess of 30, and thus it wouldn't be a big deal for me because I wouldn't have to take it. When you look at the weight charts, they classify me as overweight, but not obese.) It's not like they are requiring you to lose weight when you take the class. That said, there is a pretty basic problem here: The University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League School - we're not talking about some community college here. Their business school, Wharton, is considered one of the best business schools in the country, if not the world. Anyone intelligent enough to get accepted at and graduate from the University of Pennsylvania would almost certainly also know that A) They are obese B) Why they are obese and C) What they need to do to stop being obese. Are you really going to be teaching them something they don't already know?

 

Let me tell you guys something, the greatest day of my life (up until that point, anyhow) was the day I graduated from the tenth grade. Why? Because at that time there stopped being a physical education requirement. for 11 years (k -- 10) I had suffered through the humiliations of those <deleted> classes. Constantly picked last for the team, rolled eyes from the people who had to take me, relegated to goalie because "it'll be tough to get the ball past THAT guy, har de har har har", a chance for dumbass jocks who couldn't spell their own names correctly by the third grade to humiliate, degrade, and intimidate me, and teachers with the sensitivity of cinderblocks to subtly insinuate that because I was a big, clumsy kid I was somehow worth less as a human being than the future rapist* who could run fast.

At my college and university there was no physical education requirement. People treated me there based on my behaviour, personality, and value as a person rather than my athletic skills. You don't have to be an athlete to be a valuable member of society, a happy person, or even a good person.

I understand that this program and others like it are designed by athletic people who have only the best of intentions. But people with high BMI numbers have enough troubles without once again being publicly humiliated by the jock crowd. I can just hear the jokes in the locker rooms from the a******s who are functionally illiterate but getting a full ride because they can bounce a ball when these students come in to change.

Screw that idea, it's utter

*You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Bastard I went to elementary and junior high with is doing time as we speak for rape. But man, what an athlete!

 

But LKD, the only people required to take these classes are obese people - and it's not a PhysEd class, it's taught in a classroom. You wouldn't have to get changed, show you were athletic or anything like that. Furthermore, considering everyone else in the class is also obese, I hardly think anyone would be mocking anyone else for being obese.

 

I agree that it should be for all students, and probably mandatory, too. And cover a lot more than just obesity. As has been pointed out by others, there are a lot of things people don't know about basic health. What's a good exercise routine? How do I build muscle? What's safe? How can I injure myself? Unfortunately, Phys Ed in high school seems to be piss poor across the nation.

I think the difference between obesity and other health risks (drugs, low weight, etc.) is that most people see obesity as a simple matter of lazyness (i.e. if you pushed them, they'd loose weight, it's just that nothing's pushing them), whereas people see drugs as a serious addiction and anorexia as a mental condition. The truth is more complicated. There are some who are obese just because they don't care to fix it. It isn't worth the effort in their eyes, as Joacqin pointed out. For others there may be real issues, either medical or psychological, or at the very least it may require a radical lifestyle change, which is more than a single 3-credit-hour course is going to achieve.

 

That seems totally ridiculous to me. I can perhaps understand a general fitness program, but a requirement for a specific activity that requires a fair amount of practice to learn? That’s not only dumb, it’s also unfair.
- Unfair because someone who doesn’t know how to swim will presumably end up spending a lot more time overall than someone who already knows how to swim, and in university, time can be somewhat of a valuable commodity which could be better spent on something more useful (like studying).
- Dumb because it’s unlikely that swimming (or any other specific activity) is relevant to the actual career one is getting an education for. IMO, you should only be forced to take classes in things that are somehow related to what you are majoring or minoring in; anything else should be optional. (As an aside, I realize that knowing how to swim can be useful if, for example, you find yourself suddenly in deep water, but the same could be said for a lot of other things in certain circumstances.)

Not when I went, but that was 30 years ago. I'm not sure about now.

 

Not in the class, but in the halls, or the next class coming in, I can hear the whispers "oh, it's the the Pudge Patrol", "Getting off your Lazy Ass 101 must be in that building, look at all the porkers wheezing their way up the stairs" . . .

Singling out people who already have enough troubles just for the sake of making paternalistic nanny staters feel like they are "doing something to address the growing obesity problem" is grossly unfair, and lacks even the basics of sensitivity.

In any event, the article says

so it won't just be in class. It'll be out in the open where anyone who cares to can take cheap shots at a captive group of targets. Maybe that song is right: "High School Never Ends"

 

I tend to agree with LKD on this. The "fat-boy class" will be well known and people entering it will be subjected to humiliation.

The idea was good, the method was poor. If they want to have a class about good health choices, it should be manditory for everyone. Include the 'horrors of alcohol' and 'evils of drugs' in the mix. Along with a good dose of 'cigarettes will kill your stupid ass', 'stop shoving that junk in your face' and 'working off that big ass and belly' -- at least you can then offend 90% of the student population and not be discriminatory.

 

Actually, if you're obese, weight training is a great way to get in shape. Obese people may find even light walking and aerobics to be very physically taxing, but one thing obese people have is quite a bit of muscle. In fact, they are stronger than the average person overall.

 

I think a test of physical condition would be appropriate for those who don't want to sit through the theory. A cooper test or the aforementioned swimming test would be a very good idea.

@LKD

I appreciate where you are coming from but the fact is that the physical health of the youth today is deteriorating at an alarming pace. Something has to be done to reverse this development and physical education is a good place to start. The way it's organized today is probably not the best way, I think physical education should be really more about finding everyone a form of excericise they can enjoy and be comfortable with and the rest could well be done outside school hours. I absolutely reject the idea that being obese and having a poor physical condition is a lifestyle choice, one way or the other the society will end up paying for those who choose this harmful condition. I find being obese about as acceptable as being an alcoholic or a drug addict.

Finnish schools typically use the nearest public funded pools to teach swimming for children.

 

Yes, but with alcoholics and drug addicts we take measures to avoid humiliating them. They are "sick", supposedly, and don't deserve our scorn. But fat people? Aww, well, they deserve every bit of our scorn, the fat slobs. They are the one group it is still perfectly OK to belittle and mock.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't encourage the obese to address their issues. But moves like this that set them up for public humiliation are not the way to go. I lived this through my entire childhood and youth. Extending it to college is sheer stupidity.

 

I thought is was about Lincoln University. A predomintly Black school, where obesity is an issue with it's student population. Not Penn.

 

We all already know I'm an idiot, but perhaps I'm dyslexic as well. I read Splunge's opening post of "A Pennsylvania university's requirememt" as "University of Pennsylvania's requirement". My bad.

 

Hello there. I have serious health problems causing me to be obese.

Will you support measures that will amount to nothing else than trying to shame me to being healthy? Why, I do think you will.

Actions have consequences; including ones you don't expect.

 

It's a graduation *gown*....not a Muumuu.

You can't tell a junky just by looking at them....and even if you suspect they are, you can't prove it. Unless all graduates are required to take a drug test right before they walk.

Personally, I think both are awesome ideas!

 

In this case, I think one of the unintended consequences will be that that the institution in question will experience a drop in enrollment, as the students go somewhere where they will feel respected and treated with dignity. There's LOTS of colleges and universities out there. Hopefully, the blow to the bottom line will make the people who thought this stupid policy up reconsider.

 

That should be easy enough to check. They instituted the policy four years ago - this is just the first graduating class that was subject to the regulation. While I'm sure the total enrollment is about the same, I imagine there's somewhere where you can check on the number of applicants, or find out what the admission percentage is, and do some arithmetic.