Yale University 'Sorry' For Threatening To Suspend Student Frances Chan For Being Too Skinny

[bethan_b_bad]

Yale University has admitted it "made a mistake" after accusing a student of having an eating disorder and warning if she didn't put on weight she'd be put on medical leave

Comments

[wrestlingdog]

Wow, that is incredibly fucked up. You cannot diagnose an eating disorder just on looks alone, and you certainly can't treat one by bullying or threatening to suspend someone who you suspect of having an eating disorder. Not only is that unbelievably poor treatment of the person you're targeting, but that also perpetuates the idea that only people who are super super thin can have an eating disorder, which is also super dangerous and stops a lot of people from receiving the treatment they need.

[beuk]

Misapplication of BMI at the individual level. Health care professionals should know better.

Slate.com had an interesting article published roughly five years ago. Nothing really has changed.

[wanderinspirits]

Reminds me of my current roommate being pulled out of the room a week after she moved in. Turns out because she wasn't using her meal plan all the time, the school believed she had an eating disorder. They aruged and argued with her for about 30 minutes before letting it go because she explained that her parents would drop her off every Sunday after she went home with a week's worth of groceries because the food on campus made her sick. (I think her mom ended up speaking to the head of housing, it wasn't even the stupid Health services! >:( It was Housing

[nesmith]

The fact that there are supposed "health professionals" out there who apparently don't have enough brains and common sense to take their eyes off a flawed number to ACTUALLY LOOK AT THE PERSON IN FRONT OF THEM is really worrying.

[lied_ohne_worte]

Wow, that's awful. I'm glad that universities here don't concern themselves with where people live and whether they eat in the student cafeterias or not - I'd consider that sort of thing an extreme intrusion into privacy when they're dealing with adults whom they're merely supposed to educate, not parent.

[tabaqui]

Fucking ridiculous.
Wanna bet that the number of male students who've had to go through this are probably in the single digits under five?

[sweetwaterpink]

Everyone knows that men don't suffer from eating disorders. /sarcasm.

[rhysande]

I don't know about that. Both of my sons were harrassed by their schools from elementary school on up because the boys "had too little body fat". The school didn't care that it was just their metabolism, they were too many standard deviations out. It was all about making the reports look good.

I suspect the main difference is that males get accused of drug abuse, females get accused of eating disorders.

[bgd_thrifty]

I think it's important that residential places of education are aware of the health issues of their students but this was carried out ridiculously badly. Firstly because an eating disorder isn't categorised by weight and secondly because surely there should have been some kind of psychological testing?

However, medical leave for those with eating disorders can be extremely vital to their health, giving them time to get a head start on recovery. Processes like this should be made better, not got rid of.