Carleton University has students and some faculty upset over a decision to remove scales for its gym because, according to one students, “scales are very triggering” for people with eating disorders. Some asked if mirrors would be next. However, that decision was already made in one dorm in Bucknell University where mirrors were covered in an effort to promote “body positivity” and “self-love.” Various schools have similarly adopted “mirrorless Mondays” to combat eating disorders and triggering episodes.
Students and some faculty have launched a campaign #bringbackthescale” while Bruce Marshall, manager of wellness programs at Carleton, “we will weigh the pros and cons and may reconsider our decision.”
One approach would be to leave it up to individual students on whether they want to use a scale but not remove scales because some students could be “triggered.” Indeed, Marshall indicated that the decision was not based on any complaints over the presence of mirrors in the gym.
It seems that from speech restrictions to equipment removals, universities are increasingly allowing those with heightened sensitivities to dictate conditions on campuses. I think that campaigns to address eating disorders are laudatory and important. However, blocking mirrors for other students or removing scales is not, in my view, a logical or fair approach to this very real problem.
What do you think?
Easy solution. Not our place to learn all the latest bull spit. They don’t want to learn the language. ignore them . When it comes time for tuition or whatever ignore them. That goes for thier dip spit Professors. Let them stand in the corner and J off (notice J is gender neutral) and when it comes time for graduation spell it is a frauduation and not to be used as a qualification for anything. Better yet write them up for interfering with the education of others which is a form of theft. I did that routinely in my store but not too often they quit applying if they could make change and do so without a calculator.
Apart from the sheer idiocy of this, it does prove – if proof were needed – that liberalism and its tyranny, are a flight from reality.
Quote:
Students and some faculty have launched a campaign #bringbackthescale” while Bruce Marshall, manager of wellness programs at Carleton, “we will weigh the pros and cons and may reconsider our decision.”
Uh oh – won’t “weighing” the options trigger some of these sensitive people? I thought they were trying to avoid all of that…
By the way, the GRE and GMAT trigger me. I want to get rid of them so that I can start my MBA without the hassle. Is that cool with everyone? What a joke. Some stuff makes sense, and the rest of it is designed towards turning our world into a padded room where nobody can bump their little knee on anything.
This was likely an effort to combat eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. These are indeed very difficult illnesses to treat, almost as if the sufferer is possessed. What they see in the mirror is not a real image of themselves.
Although you can be compassionate, supportive, and help sufferers get treatment, you cannot remove triggers for all mental illnesses or eating disorders. The gym, itself, is a trigger for anorexics whose compulsion dictates that they run on a treadmill for an hour to work off a handful of almonds and iceberg lettuce leaf that they subsisted on that day. The world is full of mirrors, skinny jeans, the smell of cafeteria food, or anything that triggers anxiety and the accompanying desperate urge to control the one thing in their life that they can, what goes into their mouth. Rendering the world a safe space is not effective or helpful, because they cannot live like that, agoraphobic in their limited tiny space. If they cannot see a scale without triggering a life threatening episode, then they are not ready to go home from the treatment center. Or perhaps they are not ready to go to a gym, which for an anorexic, is a bit like a bar for an alcoholic, if they have abused it in the past. Not all anorexics and bulimics work out excessively, but many do. The existence of the building, as they walk by it, may be a trigger.
It’s an unrealistic, misguided effort, one among a general trend of trying to do away with anything distressing (as long as it’s not a conservative being protected) and conforming the world into your safe space.
Girls in the town of Tenencingo in Tlaxcala, Mexico, are in the sex trafficking capital of the country known for sex slavery. You think their walk to the store is a safe space as they avoid family, multigenerational slavers with their garrish, tacky Liberace mansions cheek by jowl with the bungalows of the people they prey upon? The world is not a safe space, and creating the belief that we can purify the globe of triggers for this generation does them a disservice. (See, non sequitur tied in neatly.)
Where the frig is Carleton?
There is a Carleton College in Minnesota. It should not be confused with this so called University up in Ottawa, Canada.
Will the fat-shaming keyboard warriors here state THEIR weights?
I’ll wager a bunch many will be well above their BMI (Body Mass Index) for their heights …
This whole story is FAKENEWS! What really happened is that Trigglypuff busted the spring when she tried to weigh herself, and the “banning scales” story is just an excuse to cover up TrigglyP’s little bo bo.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
As a recovered eating disorder afflictee, I still have issues with weighing myself – it makes me nervous. I took a lot of fitness classes in college to help keep weight controlled and stress levels down, but I would just tell the instructors on the 2 weigh-in days (beginning and end of semester) I had issues, and they let me self-report the numbers. No problem. I wouldn’t expect them to get rid of the scales just because I had a sensitivity – majority rules! Common sense.
Ban women on campus from wearing short skirts. An 18 year old adult female with nice legs and no underwear will trigger all sorts of notions in the boys’s minds. This is related to the Ferguson Effect (1st) which happened in 1967. Ferguson girls wearing Ferguson letter sweaters with an F on them rode through Steak N Shake in Jennings then Steak N Shakes in Riverview and Florissant. The girls rode through in a convertible and three in the rear seat sat on top of the seat in short skirts, high heals, no under wear and showed their stuff. The Ferguson Effect! You heard it here. Soon the girls from all around North St. Louis County suburbs were doing the same.
I don’t get it. If you’re afraid of what a scale might tell you, all you have to do is not step on it. What about those of us trying to take control of weight problems by monitoring our weight, shouldn’t we at least have the opportunity to do that? The bloated pigs who are likely to be triggered (how’s that for triggering) are probably not even in the gym to begin with. That’s part of their problem. This is a stupid idea on almost every conceivable level.
They’re putatively worried about anorectics and bulemics, not the fat.
I think it’s an indication of the degree to which a certain sort of professional-managerial type things of the rest of the population not as working adults but as a custodial population.
Wife: “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?”
Husband: “No sweetheart, your fat makes you look fat.”
Husband: “Let’s not blame the dress”
Pick your extreme. This one’s a fairly innocuous extreme, but an extreme never the less. In the other direction people get away with free speech in Dahlonega Ga. Read the WAPO article unless you are afraid to burn your eyes.
Innocuous, but goofy all the same.
Indeed, Marshall indicated that the decision was not based on any complaints over the presence of mirrors in the gym.
Ye gods. This fellow is a contemporary of mine. He never saw the inside of a teachers’ college or social work program, either. If you supposed institutions would improve once the Boomers retired, you might be disappointed.