Lincoln University requires fat students to take a fitness class in order to graduate:

The mandate, which took effect for freshmen entering in fall 2006, requires students to get tested for their body mass index, a measure of weight to height.

A normal BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9. Students with one that’s 30 or above — considered obese — are required to take a class called “Fitness for Life,” which meets three hours a week.

The course involves walking, aerobics, weight training and other physical activities, as well as information on nutrition, stress and sleep…

“We know we’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic,” said James L. DeBoy, chairman of Lincoln’s department of health, physical education and recreation. “We have an obligation to address this head on, knowing full well there’s going to be some fallout.”

I realize that Lincoln University is not the government, but its actions here are in line with the direction of public health arguments. Some people have been warning about the totalitarian implications of using public health terms, like “epidemic,” to describe personal health issues, like obesity. Some have noted that once the government runs healthcare and taxes pay for every healthcare cost, the argument is easily made that there is no longer such a thing as a private health issue. Many will be prepared to argue that when your behavior imposes costs on the system, and we all pay for the system, you can hardly claim that that your fat ass is none of our business. Your personal health, your exercise and dietary habits, are not yours alone. That argument can seen in my novel Mean Martin Manning, as Dr. Kravis testifies at Martin’s trial. A taste:

Well, aside from the obvious — that I needed to be helped for my own sake — it seemed to him that my attitude and behavior placed an unfair burden on my fellow citizens. I couldn’t very well maintain that my decisions were a private matter. By eating poorly and avoiding regular medical care and appropriate screening, I was likely to experience more problems and need more advanced treatment in the future. This meant a greater cost, to be shouldered by taxpayers. It was no exaggeration to suggest that people like me were robbing our children of their future. Our self-negligence was draining money from other important uses, like literacy training and midnight piano lessons. Simply put, I was the reason kids didn’t have any books to read and were shooting each other in the streets. My choices had public costs and consequences, so the government had a right — an obligation — to step in to correct my behavior for the good of society. It was only fair.

I write satire. I exaggerate in order to mock, to explore themes, to poke fun, to advance my plot. Satire of this kind is all about examining the slippery slope. I see it everywhere. But I can’t be the only one who sees that this isn’t fiction any longer, that the slippery slope is real. Other people are reading the news, too, right? Almost every day there is some step, often by government or at least encouraged by government, to more tightly control private behavior — to tell people how to eat, that they have to exercise, and on and on.

I have a friend, a liberal-leaning but very nice and normal person, whom I don’t think of as radical in the least — this is not a frothing-at-the-mouth type. This friend is very smart, educated, accomplished, and reasonable even in disagreement. And this friend told me, over lunch one day, that my position, that we should not tax food in order to deter behavior that causes obesity, was extreme. I had mentioned something outrageous: I thought it was up to people to eat what they wanted. I was in polite company, so I agreed that doctors and friends might advise people to reduce consumption of fatty foods and said that I could even understand the desire for having more information about the food in restaurants (posting calories and fat content), though I didn’t think it would help reduce obesity and I understood the problems this posed to small businesses. The point is, I wasn’t taking the iconoclastic libertarian “let ‘em all do heroin” position. Yet I was called extreme — politely, because my friend is polite — for saying that it simply was not the government’s business what people ate.

My friend’s implication was clear, and wasn’t merely implied — not everyone was educated or responsible enough to make their own choices, and those of us who were educated and responsible enough shouldn’t mind paying a little more for our soda if it (a tax on unhealthy food) helped persuade those not educated or responsible enough (usually poor people, whose purchases would be most influenced by these taxes that they couldn’t afford as easily as we educated, not-poor people could) not to drink so much soda.

This policy at Lincoln University does not surprise me. And I might be accused of believing in slippery slopes or anti-government paranoia or believing my own fiction, but I think that this is only the beginning.

I should note that Lincoln does not justify its policy by referring to public health costs. it justifies its policy by referring to the best interests of its students and the epidemic in general. Mostly, Lincoln is forcing fat people to exercise for their own good. Imposing self-improvement is precisely the focus of Martin Manning’s adversary, Caseworker Alice Pitney.

You can find out more about Mean Martin Manning here.

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