Yale threatened to expel student for having a low BMI...

Iwishyouwell

She "won", but it's pathetic that this country has become so accustomed to obesity that a naturally thin woman of Asian makeup, with no signs of an eating disorder, is put through an ordeal like this:

https://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/yale-university-drops-threat-to-kick-out-student-for-being-too-skinny-180302055.html

Can you imagine the uproar if a university threatened expulsion, and forced medical treatment, on students who were overweight and obese according to their BMI?

AllOutof_Bubblegum

Ridonkadonk.

For as smart as you have to be to get in, Yale sure is run by a bunch of idiots. SMH.

susannamarie

Jeeze, she's a lot more compliant than I would have been, I would have been at a lawyer when they told me they weren't optional.

She looks skinny but fine.

susannamarie

My God, and apparently they're in the habit of doing this to slender students:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-chan/yale-eating-disorders_b_4921382.html

MizMimi111

Because low BMI & weight are the only indicators of anorexia. :noway:

Stoopid!! :grumble:

Achrya

Schools can kick you out for being having a low bmi?




Also this speaks to an issue with BMI in general, as it's fairly common for Asians to be considered 'underweight' by BMI, when they are in fact of a very healthy weight. They happen to be naturally smaller/lighter.

Domineer

Ridiculous. I would sue them big time if I were her

buzzcogs

It shows what crap the BMI is.

edisonsbulb

I'm really tired of the public (and, apparently, now corporate companies and Yale) trying to regulate women's bodies. Period. Whether she actually looks ok is irrelevant. I don't want to live in a world where some other person or entity is worried about my health or body.

OkamiLavande

I would feel so dehumanized by this experience. I know from going for mental health examinations they are very uncomfortable and make you admit things you sometimes don't want to, but mine were by choice. To force someone to have to have a mental health examination for an eating disorder, which would be intense and very hypercritical of every opinion towards food, is so unethical. She made a choice to go to the school, the school can control the cafeteria and the foods they eat, but it can't control genetics and your health. Imagine the uproar if this happened to a clinically obese student? The accept-overweight-people-as-they-are crowd would be all in a tiff because of it. This poor woman. I'm her age and being in college and having something dramatic happen there is one of those things that stays with you a long time.

Branstin

I'm really tired of the public (and, apparently, now corporate companies and Yale) trying to regulate women's bodies. Period. Whether she actually looks ok is irrelevant. I don't want to live in a world where some other person or entity is worried about my health or body.

Thank you!

PJPrimrose

WTH? I read about this. What is with the damn food police? Who the heck are they to tell anyone how much they should/n't weigh under any circumstances? I'm with Edisonsbulb! Tell it girl!

psmd

I saw this and thought it was outrageous. It raises some questions too, are they doing this to men, and to the overweight? My guess is no. So crazy!

susannamarie

They are doing it to men (following the links revealed at least one male student who was chased after because of his low BMI) but I don't think so about the overweight.

psmd

They are doing it to men (following the links revealed at least one male student who was chased after because of his low BMI) but I don't think so about the overweight.

Still absurd. I know so many "skinny" men (and women) who absolutely do not have eating disorders.

dsb188

I think that its weird that a school actually said something to her versus a friend or family member. It wasn't their place to say anything. I feel like that was an invasion of privacy and she also had to jump through all these hoops to prove she wasn't.

BinaryPulsar

I like the responses in this thread.

LiftAllThePizzas

I'm surprised she wasn't smart enough to just keep adding weight to her pockets when she went for her weekly weigh-ins, because I've never been to a doctor's appointment where they forced you to take off clothes before stepping on their scale. (They've even weighed me with a coat and boots on at some places.)

nolabone

I'm surprised she wasn't smart enough to just keep adding weight to her pockets when she went for her weekly weigh-ins, because I've never been to a doctor's appointment where they forced you to take off clothes before stepping on their scale. (They've even weighed me with a coat and boots on at some places.)

She shouldn't have to add weights, simply because of the ridiculousness of the situation.

LiftAllThePizzas

I'm surprised she wasn't smart enough to just keep adding weight to her pockets when she went for her weekly weigh-ins, because I've never been to a doctor's appointment where they forced you to take off clothes before stepping on their scale. (They've even weighed me with a coat and boots on at some places.)

She shouldn't have to add weights, simply because of the ridiculousness of the situation.

She shouldn't have had to, but ridiculous situations call for ridiculous solutions. She said she was so upset about it yet continued to just go along with whatever they told her to do. Seems her problem-solving skills and communications skills were very lacking if it took that long to finally get someone's attention or mention that she had always weighed that much.

BinaryPulsar

I'm surprised she wasn't smart enough to just keep adding weight to her pockets when she went for her weekly weigh-ins, because I've never been to a doctor's appointment where they forced you to take off clothes before stepping on their scale. (They've even weighed me with a coat and boots on at some places.)

She shouldn't have to add weights, simply because of the ridiculousness of the situation.

She shouldn't have had to, but ridiculous situations call for ridiculous solutions. She said she was so upset about it yet continued to just go along with whatever they told her to do. Seems her problem-solving skills and communications skills were very lacking if it took that long to finally get someone's attention or mention that she had always weighed that much.

Well she is young.

Sometimes when a person cares about health and a doctor says they are unhealthy they need time to figure it out.

She didn't think to add weights because that would appear to be the actions of a person that was "guilty" of disorder and dysfunction.

FoodFitnessTravel

this is RIDICULOUS.

jaya_lakshmi27

This is ridiculous.

For one thing, a school shouldn't force anybody to change their body. It's a school, not a mental facility.

For another thing, a lot of Asians (including my family-we're Indian) just have a naturally slim figure. I'm quite curvy, but a healthy BMI for me is lower than another's. My sister is SUPER healthy (slim, athletic, perfect nutrient stuff), and has a low BMI!

Finally, having a low BMI doesn't say that you have anorexia. I know someone who eats LOADS and is INCREDIBLY skinny. You could be naturally skinny with a low BMI and fast metabolism. Your healthy weight would be lower than someone curvy! My healthy weight is one BMI point thing above my sister's, purely for body type issues!

This is a SCHOOL.

BinaryPulsar

I am petite and small framed. I also come from a small family. The women in my family are all 4'10 to 5'2.

mactaffy84

Though I think this is terrible, they didn't threaten expulsion. They threatened a medical leave, which is a huge difference.

brevislux

What? My uni never checked my "health record", weighed me, requested a doctor would run a test on me, or anything of the sort. How is it their business?

neandermagnon

forcing non-average people to be average is a form of discrimination. It's also stupid and unhealthy. I mean what did they expect this woman to do? Gain a whole bunch of fat to make her weight more average? Small framed people usually can't build as much muscle as larger framed people, even with the right training and diet. And women can't gain that much compared to men. So if she had succeeded in gaining weight until her weight was more average, it would have been mostly fat she gained.

Kind of disappointing that this is from one of USA's top universities... you'd think they'd understand about normal human variation and the dangers of expecting outliers to be average.

Madame_Goldbricker

What? My uni never checked my "health record", weighed me, requested a doctor would run a test on me, or anything of the sort. How is it their business?

The student had previously visited student health as a result of finding a breast lump. She was then called back in due to her low BMI being flagged up. Now I'm not saying its right that they used this as a 'one size fits all measurememt'.

However, there is a percentage of college students who do develop ED whilst attending. These are generally young adults who are away from family/peers who might be more aware of if the person has developed disordered behaviours. So the other side of the story is if the college hadn't flagged this concern up would they then have failed their duty of care?.

neandermagnon

What? My uni never checked my "health record", weighed me, requested a doctor would run a test on me, or anything of the sort. How is it their business?

The student had previously visited student health as a result of finding a breast lump. She was then called back in due to her low BMI being flagged up. Now I'm not saying its right that they used this as a 'one size fits all measurememt'.

However, there is a percentage of college students who do develop ED whilst attending. These are generally young adults who are away from family/peers who might be more aware of if the person has developed disordered behaviours. So the other side of the story is if the college hadn't flagged this concern up would they then have failed their duty of care?.

I don't disagree with flagging these issues (for obesity as well as eating disorders and being underweight), however they need to understand that BMI is not a "one size fits all" and that very small framed and very large framed people do exist and that overweight/underweight is relative to your frame size and body proportions not just to your height, and that more muscle mass will raise BMI.

I get this from the opposite end, as I'm large framed, naturally muscular and have a relatively long torso/short limbs, and these things give me a high lean body mass for my height. I would expect medical professionals to take that into account, and the fact that I lift weights, and check my body fat percentage, before making a judgement about how much I should weigh. And I'd expect them to do the same for small framed people as well. In fact they should do this even for normal weight people, because a lot of sedentary people have too much body fat, low muscle mass and low bone density and other poor health markers in spite of being in the healthy BMI range. Just because they're in the healthy range does not mean they don't need to be advised to do exercise and eat a balanced diet.

Unfortunately a lot of health professionals do no more than read off a BMI chart and take no other factors into account and seem to be unaware that people can fall outside the BMI healthy weight range and still be 100% healthy with no need to lose or gain weight, or that people in the healthy BMI range can be in very poor health as a result of a sedentary lifestyle and unbalanced diet, and that they too should be striving to be active and eat a balanced diet.

susannamarie

What? My uni never checked my "health record", weighed me, requested a doctor would run a test on me, or anything of the sort. How is it their business?

The student had previously visited student health as a result of finding a breast lump. She was then called back in due to her low BMI being flagged up. Now I'm not saying its right that they used this as a 'one size fits all measurememt'.

However, there is a percentage of college students who do develop ED whilst attending. These are generally young adults who are away from family/peers who might be more aware of if the person has developed disordered behaviours. So the other side of the story is if the college hadn't flagged this concern up would they then have failed their duty of care?.

Frankly I don't disagree with them calling her in for a consultation. But it should be enough to check that her weight is stable and she's always been on this growth curve.

DrMAvDPhD

I don't really think it was that bad for health services to call her back to talk about her weight. They are MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS before they are university employees. They saw something concerning and followed up on it. What is sad about this story is the absolute negligence of the staff, by not looking at her medical history or doing anything else to test her health.

BMI isn't perfect but it isn't as bad as people make it out to be. However, it is a well established fact that for Asians, BMI standards actually tend to OVERestimate how heavy "healthy" is. So this really shouldn't have happened. Interestingly, there is no race for which BMI tends to underestimate healthy weights.