"Higher Education: The Art of Discrimination and Hypocrisy."

Lincoln University one of the first historically African American colleges founded in part because many of the institutions of higher education in the state of Pennsylvania and the United States would not admit African Americans based upon discriminatory policies. Now Lincoln has a policy of its own that discriminates against students that are overweight by not allowing them to graduate.

A requirement that the institution which has been in place since 2006 will now be enforced on students attending Lincoln University. Students with a body mass of 30 or more will be mandated to take a physical education class in order to receive a degree despite the fact that students have fulfilled the mandatory academic requirements that the school has set.

The irony is this policy is discriminatory, especially against African Americans who are the primary students attending Lincoln University. There is no compromising with discrimination, and I find it appalling that Lincoln University's administration would ostracize and belittle students attending the school based on their weight instead of their academic intelligence, integrity, and the positive impact they'll have on society.

And so it begins. First discrimination starts with an individual's weight, then their height, followed by religious beliefs and finally, their ethnicity. Perhaps the students should transfer from Lincoln University to an institution of higher learning where in the past they made no pretense of equality and integrity and where discrimination can be taken literally and without the base aloid of hypocrisy.

If the administration at Lincoln University was attempting to get the public's attention regarding this issue, they've succeeded--but for all the wrong reasons. The administrations have embraced this discrimination towards the students and have the audacity to call it compassion and respect to the student body.

Sadly, compassion and respect for students attending Lincoln University was the furthest things away from their thinking when they made such an inhumane decision. The civil rights movement worked endlessly to eliminate the stereotypes society portrayed against minorities. Lincoln University has set the cause of equal opportunity back 50 years by promoting the old stereotype that overweight people are not worthy of the same advantages as thinner people. Maybe next they can require their students to have plastic surgery in case they don't meet society's standards of beauty. Shame on Lincoln University for taking people who are vulnerable to the ignorance of others and perpetuating it in a formal school policy.



Best Regards,

Anthony P. Johnson, Ph.D. Candidate, Author