A Yale University student has finally triumphed over college health administrators, who for months told her she was too skinny and would have to put on serious weight or be expelled.
The 20-year-old student, Frances Chan, is 5’2 tall and weighs 92 pounds. She has always been small and has tiny parents and grandparents, according to the New Haven Register. She is a healthy person and does not suffer from any eating disorder.
And yet, Yale doctors told her that her in no uncertain terms that her weight would kill her. (RELATED: School district to mother: No Common Core opt-outs, let us humiliate your kids)
“If we don’t tackle your low weight now, it will kill you,” a Yale doctor told Chan, according to her account in The Huffington Post.
To address her fat-deficiency, Chan was told to eat junk food and ice cream. She began taking the elevator, rather than the stairs. Still, she could only gain two pounds. And she needed to gain more to avoid expulsion, administrators said. Frequent therapy session about her lack of fat did little to help matters.
The problem, wrote Chan, is that Yale’s doctors place too much importance on body mass index, an oft-used but controversial measure of health and fitness. BMI’s strict parameters label many perfectly healthy people as “overweight” or “underweight.”(RELATED: College funds ‘Fat Justice and Feminism’ event that trashes Reagan, capitalism, healthiness)
“I asked my health-conscious friends what they do to remain slim and did the exact opposite,” she recalled.
Finally, Chan had had enough. She went public with her plight, and ridiculed the college for making her feel so uncomfortable in her own, perfectly healthy body.
The negative publicity forced the college to change course. She is now free to be her natural size.