New College 101: Exercise Your Mind AND Body

The adults succumbed to peer pressure like freshmen at a fraternity party being passed the beer.

Rather than invoke the creative thought processes that higher education hopes to instill in its students, administrators at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University just balked.  They shriveled like last week’s pizza left under a pile of calculus books in a dorm room corner.

“We don’t want people to feel like they’re being picked on,” Lincoln President Ivory Nelson told the Lincolnian, the school newspaper.

Dr. Ivory Nelson, President, Lincoln University

No, instead, you’d rather graduate a class of couch potatoes, on the fast track to diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and death.  So much for higher education.

Starting in 2006, Lincoln University in southeastern PA, required that students with a Body Mass Index of 30 or higher take a physical education class in order to graduate.  This year, that amounted to about 15% of the 2,100 students. Controversy ensued when critics complained that the ruling was discriminatory to both obese people and to black students at the historically black university.  Obese students felt singled out.

This week, the university repealed the requirement.

A recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that African Americans have a 51 percent greater likelihood than whites of becoming obese.  I believe that James DeBoy, the chair of Lincoln’s Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, was on the right track.  He just needed to hone his idea a bit more.

I ask this: Why wasn’t the course required for ALL students in the first place?

Had that been the case, we never would have heard about it.  Universities have been requiring physical education and swimming for decades.  In fact, despite rising obesity numbers, over time, colleges have been cutting these requirements.  It’s easier to explain budget cuts in college gym classes than in biology labs.

Some of the discriminatory comments circle around the idea that disadvantaged students might not have the resources to swim or get in shape.  Colleges requiring swim will TEACH it.  And you don’t need a fancy gym to slim down; you need two feet and a sidewalk.   By the way, Lincoln does have gyms, an Olympic-sized pool, and a dance studio.

Colleges of all sizes and endowments have gym requirements.  These days, students don’t need to endure dodge ball and other awful memories of elementary school gym. (Did anyone else out there have to square dance?)

Cases in point:

1. Swarthmore College, PA: students not excused for medical reasons are required to complete 4 units of physical education by the end of their sophomore year.  All students must pass a survival swimming test or complete a unit of swimming instruction.

2. Cornell University, NY: Students must take two credits of physical education and pass a swim test.

Cornell University

3. Davidson College, NC: This school doesn’t mess around.  There are FOUR required credits of phys ed PLUS A SWIM TEST.

4. Dartmouth College, NH: The Ivy requires 3 gym classes plus a swim test.

And if you thought this is limited to private universities with big fat endowments, think again.

The State University of New York at Binghamton requires students to take two credits of “physical activity/wellness.”

I can speak to the Cornell offerings for “gym”—there are more than 100. Good luck getting into Ballroom Dancing or Pistol Shooting.  Yes, these are gym classes and often are the first to close out.  I took Ice Skating for Ice Hockey and Weightlifting (which led to a nice, drawn out slim down post-Freshman 15)

Cornell’s Swim Test even has it’s own website and history:

The origin of the swim test began around 1918 for women when the Director of Women’s Physical Education felt that it was a necessary skill for women to have. The swim test requirement for men was instituted about 1937 and was the result of World War II Cornell’s strong connection to ROTC; many Cornellians served in the war.

There is another way to look at it.  What a wonderful opportunity to experience an activity that you might not otherwise do.  Sailing? Check.  SCUBA, ballet, fishing?  Check, check, check.

Lincoln’s 3-year-old policy hit the news because of an “admittedly obese” and vocal editor for the student newspaper, Tiana Lawson.  She wrote she:  ”didn’t come to Lincoln to be told that my weight is not in an acceptable range…”

Lincoln’s DeBoy should have known better when choosing BMI as the gauge for health as well.  Yes, BMI numbers do correlate with cardiovascular disease mortality and increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

Courtesy: Obesity Online

However, detractors note that BMI does not account for muscle mass, thereby calculating that many professional athletes in their prime are technically obese.

Body Builder Lee Priest: Technically Obese

All colleges need to do is give credit to students for showing up to PE and “giving it the “old college try” (First attributed to Babe Ruth, by the way.)

Mortimer Adler 1902-2001 (Credit: Bachrach)

At Columbia University, the great philosopher and educator Mortimer Adler hadn’t taken his swim test nor fulfilled his gym requirement.  He went on to earn his PhD at the university and began to teach, all without a Bachelors degree. As he told Dick Cavett in 1978:

“And my reason for not going to gym was that I hated to dress and undress in the middle of the day.”

Over his life, Adler wrote more than 30 books, was co-founder of the Great Books Program and chairman of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s board of editors.  He wrote curricula for elementary and secondary schools, where physical education played important parts.  He just didn’t see a place for it in college.

I believe it’s the ideal opportunity—right when students are asserting themselves as adults creating adult habits.  They are bombarded by information and must filter what will stay and what will be quickly forgotten as soon as they move their tassels from right to left.  As much as a university is charged with offering a marketplace of ideas, it’s also charged with offering the chance to create healthy habits.