She’s 5’2’’ and just over 90 pounds. Frances Chan, a 20-year-old Yale University student, says she spent months trying to gain weight so that the Ivy League school wouldn’t kick her out.
This week, Chan shared her story of binging on ice cream and cookies, and intentionally going for the elevator instead of taking the stairs. To some people, this extreme nutrition plan would be a dream come true – for Chan, the pressure to gain weight was a nightmare.
Chan says that Yale health centre officials were worried about a potential eating disorder and warned that she might be forced to leave if she didn’t put on some weight.
Chan told U.S. outlets that she’s naturally thin, just like her parents and grandparents were at her age.
“It felt really bad to be this powerless,” Chan told the New Haven Register.
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In a blog post, Chan chronicled her ordeal: months-long weigh-ins with campus nurses, urine tests, blood tests and appointments with mental health counsellors and nutritionists. She even had an echocardiogram taken for her heart.
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Health officials caught notice of Chan and her weight after she stopped in to have a lump checked. The lump was benign but the visit had officials taking a closer look at her health.
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The Daily Telegraph reports that the university has now backed down and “insisted that her slight physique was a genetic inheritance.”
The university says it’s not allowed to discuss a student’s medical treatment because of privacy concerns, according to the New Haven newspaper.
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“Yale has a strong system of mental health care for students,” its spokesman Tom Conroy said.
Yale and Chan did not yet respond to requests for comment from Global News.
In the meantime, Chan has agreed to keep making stops to her campus health clinic for monitoring, but only once a semester.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
Follow @Carmen_Chai
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