Carleton University, many years back, had a reputation as being a druggie school. It’s located in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, where the Canadian federal government makes life messy, if not miserable, for Canadians. Carleton U, however, wants to make everything peaches and cream for its student body. To this end, it has banned its weight scale from the campus gym – for fear of triggering.
It should be stated that Carleton, as an educational institution, is not completely bonkers. Back in 2013, it finished somewhere between 401st and 500th in something called the ACADEMIC RANKING of WORLD UNIVERSITIES. It has some mediocre merit...
Obviously with this act, one can only conclude the institution has a dim opinion of its students, considering them infantile, immature, and overly sensitive – young adults to go off the deep end, should they weigh themselves, and get the wrong answer. This is a big demerit to both the university and its progeny.
So ascertaining fat facts by foot stepping on to a scale is not good because of “triggering.”
But hey, get this! Even reading an/this article on triggering comes with a message that reading the article may cause triggering! How triggery-screwy is that?
Back to the main story...
So a weight scale is to be shunned because negative emotional responses may result?
So what! So...what?
Many of us should think long and hard about our faults and frailties, and attendant negative emotional responses and reactions – and whether they are stirred up by a scale, or by unfiltered observation(s) of family or friends, or by our own harsh self-appraisals – we should take them for what’s they’re worth. We, as individuals, should not have the “right” to go through life without being offended – and we, as individuals, are NOT the centre of the universe from which we decide what is acceptable for everyone else.
Bruce Marshall is Carleton’s manager of health and wellness. Seems like a decent fellow. He volunteered to be on the Healthy Workplace Committee. But he backs this move. Unbelievably, he and others at Carleton don’t think weight should be fixated upon. Yet in The Charlatan, Carleton’s Independent Weekly, he does offer advice for those that want weigh-ins, saying “If you must weigh yourself, pick a consistent day and time...”
They favor a more “holistic” approach – whatever holistic means...But stepping on a scale is not being fixated upon anything – it is a search to see if weight is being gained, lost, or maintained.
Whatever happened to the idea that information was power? Or to the thought that we live in a knowledge-based world? Carleton must figure its students are complete idiots, wherein if scales are banned, they’ll not know they are portly, rotund, obese, or gargantuan – when they look into a mirror. Should mirrors be banned for fear of upsetting one’s feelings? Should airlines widen seats for fear of reminding folks they are too wide in the rump? Like that’ll ever happen...
The scrapping of the scale does have backers. One person tweeted that “We live in a weight-obsessed culture that’s very toxic.” But that can’t be true as obesity rates are through the roof in this world, in countries rich and poor. If we were truly weight obsessed we’d be anorexic at worst or skinny at least, like models. But when most of us flop on the couch it shudders while we sigh.
And, basically, the removal of scales is overkill – an act that precludes kids at the gym from having any free will – to step on, or not step on, a scale in the first place. If any of us feel the scale is a trigger to WHATEVER, don’t get on it – perhaps shun your eyes away from it, perhaps cross your arms and hex it.
Look, it is rare, save for perhaps extreme gyms where elite weightlifters or bodybuilders go through the motions, for gyms to have people lining up to hit the scales like they line up for coffee. Most of us don’t want confirmation of what we intrinsically know – our waists are wider and our arms and legs are a bit more jiggly. We’re not stupid, no matter what Carleton University thinks – we know when we are fattening up. We know the jeans bought just last year are way too snug. We know we don’t look like that Adonis or Aphrodite that graced pictures from our high school yearbooks. Should we ban clothes from yesteryear and photos from our past as well?
In a way, Carleton is correct: weight loss or gain is not the best barometer of health or fitness. But weighing oneself IS a barometer that shouldn’t be removed – from an exercise facility of all places – because students are too fey and delicate to cope with contradiction or confirmation. Keep the scales and instead emphasize that how a person feels about his or her self, or what they can do physically, is more important than an arbitrary glance at poundage.
Marshall fesses up. The taking away of scales was not based on complaints. In other words, Carleton University has committed an unforced error. It comes from their recreation and athletic department(s) from having too much time on their hands coupled with such bureaucracies intrinsic wishes to promulgate and regulate.
But Marshall does have his finger to the wind. If the flack gets too heavy they’ll rescind the decision to cover their asses, pronto. So it’s not a deep conviction being demonstrated here by the University, it’s a trolling of current trends to see what’s acceptable and what should be silenced, banned, neutered, nixed. Sadly, let us remember universities nowadays, from what the demonstrations against contrary speakers appearing at schools in Canada and the States tells us, are moving away from education and are heading towards indoctrination and the closing of minds to unpopular views, and in Carleton’s case, towards unpopular views and viewpoints of one’s body.
Carleton University was better when it was known for its druggies.
This just in. Kooky Carleton University has shifted its weight: it’s bringing back scales into change rooms!
It should be stated that Carleton, as an educational institution, is not completely bonkers. Back in 2013, it finished somewhere between 401st and 500th in something called the ACADEMIC RANKING of WORLD UNIVERSITIES. It has some mediocre merit...
Obviously with this act, one can only conclude the institution has a dim opinion of its students, considering them infantile, immature, and overly sensitive – young adults to go off the deep end, should they weigh themselves, and get the wrong answer. This is a big demerit to both the university and its progeny.
So ascertaining fat facts by foot stepping on to a scale is not good because of “triggering.”
But hey, get this! Even reading an/this article on triggering comes with a message that reading the article may cause triggering! How triggery-screwy is that?
Back to the main story...
So a weight scale is to be shunned because negative emotional responses may result?
So what! So...what?
Many of us should think long and hard about our faults and frailties, and attendant negative emotional responses and reactions – and whether they are stirred up by a scale, or by unfiltered observation(s) of family or friends, or by our own harsh self-appraisals – we should take them for what’s they’re worth. We, as individuals, should not have the “right” to go through life without being offended – and we, as individuals, are NOT the centre of the universe from which we decide what is acceptable for everyone else.
Bruce Marshall is Carleton’s manager of health and wellness. Seems like a decent fellow. He volunteered to be on the Healthy Workplace Committee. But he backs this move. Unbelievably, he and others at Carleton don’t think weight should be fixated upon. Yet in The Charlatan, Carleton’s Independent Weekly, he does offer advice for those that want weigh-ins, saying “If you must weigh yourself, pick a consistent day and time...”
They favor a more “holistic” approach – whatever holistic means...But stepping on a scale is not being fixated upon anything – it is a search to see if weight is being gained, lost, or maintained.
Whatever happened to the idea that information was power? Or to the thought that we live in a knowledge-based world? Carleton must figure its students are complete idiots, wherein if scales are banned, they’ll not know they are portly, rotund, obese, or gargantuan – when they look into a mirror. Should mirrors be banned for fear of upsetting one’s feelings? Should airlines widen seats for fear of reminding folks they are too wide in the rump? Like that’ll ever happen...
The scrapping of the scale does have backers. One person tweeted that “We live in a weight-obsessed culture that’s very toxic.” But that can’t be true as obesity rates are through the roof in this world, in countries rich and poor. If we were truly weight obsessed we’d be anorexic at worst or skinny at least, like models. But when most of us flop on the couch it shudders while we sigh.
And, basically, the removal of scales is overkill – an act that precludes kids at the gym from having any free will – to step on, or not step on, a scale in the first place. If any of us feel the scale is a trigger to WHATEVER, don’t get on it – perhaps shun your eyes away from it, perhaps cross your arms and hex it.
Look, it is rare, save for perhaps extreme gyms where elite weightlifters or bodybuilders go through the motions, for gyms to have people lining up to hit the scales like they line up for coffee. Most of us don’t want confirmation of what we intrinsically know – our waists are wider and our arms and legs are a bit more jiggly. We’re not stupid, no matter what Carleton University thinks – we know when we are fattening up. We know the jeans bought just last year are way too snug. We know we don’t look like that Adonis or Aphrodite that graced pictures from our high school yearbooks. Should we ban clothes from yesteryear and photos from our past as well?
In a way, Carleton is correct: weight loss or gain is not the best barometer of health or fitness. But weighing oneself IS a barometer that shouldn’t be removed – from an exercise facility of all places – because students are too fey and delicate to cope with contradiction or confirmation. Keep the scales and instead emphasize that how a person feels about his or her self, or what they can do physically, is more important than an arbitrary glance at poundage.
Marshall fesses up. The taking away of scales was not based on complaints. In other words, Carleton University has committed an unforced error. It comes from their recreation and athletic department(s) from having too much time on their hands coupled with such bureaucracies intrinsic wishes to promulgate and regulate.
But Marshall does have his finger to the wind. If the flack gets too heavy they’ll rescind the decision to cover their asses, pronto. So it’s not a deep conviction being demonstrated here by the University, it’s a trolling of current trends to see what’s acceptable and what should be silenced, banned, neutered, nixed. Sadly, let us remember universities nowadays, from what the demonstrations against contrary speakers appearing at schools in Canada and the States tells us, are moving away from education and are heading towards indoctrination and the closing of minds to unpopular views, and in Carleton’s case, towards unpopular views and viewpoints of one’s body.
Carleton University was better when it was known for its druggies.
This just in. Kooky Carleton University has shifted its weight: it’s bringing back scales into change rooms!