The article discusses some potential legal issues.
http://chronicle.com/article/Lincoln-U-Requires-Its/49223/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=enLincoln U. Requires Its Students to Step on the Scale
By Eric Hoover
At Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, students who are deemed too heavy must pass a physical-fitness course.
As part of the university's core curriculum, campus health educators weigh and measure all freshmen during the fall semester, and later calculate each student's body-mass index, or BMI. Those with a BMI above 30, which suggests obesity, must enroll in a one-credit course called "Fitness for Life" before they graduate. Students can satisfy that requirement if they "test out"—by subsequently earning a BMI below 30—or by passing a sports course.
As first reported on Wednesday by the university's student newspaper, The Lincolnian, some students and faculty members at the historically black institution have recently complained about the requirement. The newspaper quoted a sophomore who said, "It's not up to Lincoln to tell me how much my BMI should be." In the same article, a freshman asked: "What's the point of this?"
The point is to keep students healthy, says James L. DeBoy, chair of Lincoln's department of health, physical education, and recreation. All Lincoln students have long been required to pass a two-credit course called "Dimensions of Wellness," which covers array of subjects, such as alcohol, drugs, nutrition, and sexual health.
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J. Eric Oliver, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago, has argued that the BMI reveals far too little about how people live, how they get sick, and why they die. In Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic (Oxford University Press, 2006), Mr. Oliver wrote: "BMI is not only a poor measure of health, it is actually a lousy measure of obesity."
Whatever the case, Lincoln University appears to be the first university to make weight testing mandatory. James C. Turner, president of the American College Health Association and executive director of the University of Virginia's department of student health, said in an e-mail message that he had never heard of this kind of requirement. "I don't know if there is any evidence," he wrote, "that such a policy would result in weight loss."