Bryn Mawr College Angers Students With Insensitive Weight-Loss Email
Bryn Mawr College | Photo via Facebook.
Students at Bryn Mawr College are planning to protest after the school sent out a truly insensitive email to students with high BMIs, encouraging them to join the school’s Fitness OWLS program, short for Onward to Weight Loss Success. The subject line of the email, which you can read in full over on BuzzFeed, that has people so angry: “Give a HOOT!”
Who else is cringing?
Bryn Mawr student Rudrani Sarma, who was recently treated for an eating disorder at the college’s health center, received the email and, obviously offended, responded to the school. She posted her email to the school on Facebook. Here’s a bit of what she had to say:
“You’re telling students that they need to fit an arbitrary measurement of health (that has been criticized to the nth degree). You’re telling students that it’s more important to lose weight than to be healthy. You’re telling students that you discriminate based on weight by compiling a list of ‘fat’ students.”
The Facebook status got over 200 likes, and Sarma got a response from the health center saying she’d been added to list by mistake. Whoops? Now, the students are planning a protest or demonstration against Bryn Mawr’s “policing” of their bodies.
As a spokesman for Bryn Mawr told BuzzFeed, “We sincerely regret if our communication around this program has upset any student and have contacted the students…to examine ways to improve further communications.” Here’s a suggestion: Maybe don’t send a mass email telling overweight — or in some cases, like Sarma, not overweight — students to “give a HOOT” about their weight.
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