<p>I’m sure that the ACLU is already poking around the dorms and cafeterias soliciting clients.</p>
<p>i think that weight is an awful way to decide who needs to take this fitness class. we all know that muscle weighs more than fat and many pro athletes are infact considered “overweight”.
but because there is no point in making already healthy kids exercise, there should be some sort of a fitness test that everyone in the university has to pass. those failing, regardless of weight, should have to take the extra fitness units.</p>
<p>^Agreed… fitness is a better indicator of health than weight.</p>
<p>Honestly, if someone is “overweight” because of muscle mass, I think it would be obvious. It’s a non-issue…</p>
<p>You could do what the military does. If you’re considered overweight because of your weight, you do a fat test. If your bodyfat is within the proper range, you’re fine. If it’s above that range, you take this really tough test called the ARM and if you pass that then you’re fine. You can be “overweight” without being fat, and you can be fat and strong at the same time, and finally you can be fat and weak.</p>
<p>So BMI is not a perfect thing to measure fitness because it seems that it never was about fitness. So instead of using the imperfect measure of weight, why don’t they just have everyone take the class? Just one PE class. Don’t many universities already do that anyway? It can just be a general ed requirement that some can pass out of if they can pass a basic fitness test. This test could include some basics like running half a mile, flexibility, and knowledge of nutrition. I’m no doctor or anything, so that’s probably a flawed idea of mine. However, maybe some doctors and PE teachers could put together a test.</p>
<p>I’m guessing all or most of the students at this college have had somewhere around 12 years of gym classes.</p>
<p>Which are basically required fitness classes. Where you get graded on attendance and participation. (AKA changing into gym clothes and pretending to do something). Oh, and don’t forget the four semesters of required health in high school (at least in New Jersey). </p>
<p>Nutrition education in high school, for those who haven’t experienced it, basically consists of the teacher whining about how unhealthy our lifestyle choices are, showing us a picture of the Food Pyramid AGAIN, and then sending us off to the cafeteria, where we can always choose deep fried curly fries if we’re not really up for pizza that day.</p>
<p>If all those enlightening grade school experiences were so helpful, don’t you think there would be a lot fewer obese students by the time college rolled around?</p>
<p>I don’t think they should require anybody to do anything - if they choose to be obese, that’s their choice. Soon, they’ll start force feeding underweight people or something by making it mandatory for them to eat like 3000 calories a day or something ridiculous. It’s not like these students goto these universities so they can tell them what to do with their personal physical choices.</p>
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The article makes it sound like students can’t graduate with a BMI >30. But it could have meant that they can’t graduate until they get their BMI measured, take the class if they qualify, and show effort. I can’t tell which it means…</p>
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<p>Most people would not have a problem with those. I don’t. I just have a problem with signaling out students to take a mandatory class that has nothing at all to do with their academic achievement, or even to do with the university at all.</p>
<p>I read this article and knew it would be a pretty controversial topic. On one hand, how can you justify a student take a mandatory fitness class and not be able to graduate because of their weight and not because of their academics. But on the other hand, maybe if the regulations were more grounded on individual basis, then maybe they can implement a course than can benefit the student.</p>