The newly-installed Chancellor of the University of East Dakota at Middleburg (UED at M), Dr. D. Reginald Von Buskirk, was determined to make improvements at the campus. His predecessor had been content to collect his annual salary of $250,000 in return for a bit of tinkering with the curriculum to make it more relevant to students – the popular new Sociology course on “The Simpsons” had been his idea – but the school had mostly stagnated under his leadership. Von Buskirk was made of different stuff. The most important thing he had learned in earning his doctorate in education administration was that leaders must be bold. That idea had so overwhelmed him that he wrote his dissertation on it, “Leadership Styles and the Boldness Imperative.” His advisor had called it “the most inspiring twenty pages I’ve ever read.” Von Buskirk had a bold idea for UED at M.
He was an impressive man of 52. The first thing you noticed about VB (as everyone called him) was his remarkable fitness. A powerful physique accentuated by custom-tailored clothes, a radiant complexion that many models would have envied, and his energetic manner made him seem decades younger than his years. Every morning he swam half a mile in the campus pool and then lifted weights before a breakfast consisting of a bran muffin, a glass of grapefruit juice, and a fistful of vitamins and nutritional supplements washed down with a bottle of mineral water from a glacier in Switzerland. During the day, VB often did sets of stretching exercises in his office. A vigorous evening racquetball game with the university’s fencing coach was the highlight of his day. There was absolutely no doubt in Reginald Von Buskirk’s mind that his fitness made him a better administrator.
What very few people knew was that VB had at one time been a perfect example of an American couch potato. Back during grad school, he had tipped the scales at 289 pounds. A great evening for him was watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie while eating three pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Walking from his car to the video store left him out of breath and his girl friend Zelda dumped him, saying “All you ever want to do is eat!” But then, while paging through a magazine one evening, he spotted an ad for Doctor Bruggen’s Total Health and Fitness System.
It was a Saul on the road to Damascus conversion. VB read about the possibility of becoming trim, vigorous, healthy and attractive, all from adopting the Bruggen system. He wanted it! Immediately he called the 800 number and ordered The System. Next, he cleared out his freezer – twelve pints of Rainforest Crunch down the drain. When The System arrived, he followed the regimen exactly and was delighted with the results. By the end of the year, he had lost 100 pounds and was exercising like an Olympic athlete. It was such a success story that Doctor Bruggen was using VB as the “before and after” guy in his advertising.
Health and fitness had become a complete obsession with Reginald Von Buskirk and he was certain that a similar commitment to H&F would improve the university. Upon being named UED at M’s Chancellor, he decided to begin a new tradition, the tradition of a State of the University Address. His first address was devoted mainly to announcing his exciting Health and Fitness Initiative (the HFI). VB said, “We will all benefit from improved health and fitness. People who are healthy and fit can accomplish so much more than people who aren’t. In our increasingly competitive global economy, Americans need every advantage they can get, and being fit and healthy will give us a big one. I want to inject health and fitness into every aspect of the university. We will recruit faculty members who had demonstrated a commitment to health and fitness. We will make our curriculum as inclusive of health and fitness components as possible. I hope to see every faculty member incorporating health and fitness into every one of his courses. A history professor, for example, might include a unit on the history of nutrition-consciousness. An economics professor could spend at least a day discussing the economic harms of obesity. Also, under the HFI, we will try to recruit a student body that represents the full spectrum of health and fitness in America, from joggers and aerobics enthusiasts to weight lifters and cyclists. In an environment committed to health and fitness, with many role models for the members of our university family to emulate, I know that we will become the leading university in the nation, if not the whole world.”
The first hurdle for the HFI was the Board of Trustees. While some parts of the program could be instituted upon his direction, VB knew that he needed approval from the board for the totality of his plan. After VB gave his enthusiastic pitch, one scowly trustee, a businessman named Otis Dalrymple, said, “I just don’t see how this health and fitness mania has a darned thing to do with the business of the university. Of course it’s nice if faculty members and students are fit and healthy, but making a big deal about it detracts from our mission. People can get all the health and fitness stuff they want outside of UED at M and I don’t see what we gain from making it a ‘key component of our academic program’ as the Chancellor puts it. Hell, this HFI thing makes about as much sense as if I made my interest in opera ‘a key component’ of my business.”
Von Buskirk had expected some opposition. He realized that Dalrymple was hopelessly opposed, but tried to isolate his opposition and firm up support from the other trustees. When the Chairman turned to him to ask his reaction, VB was ready.
“I’m rather disappointed,” he began, “to hear Mr. Dalrymple’s view that the university has such a limited role. Of course the university has a critical role to play in the production and transmission of knowledge, but we must all realize that we are about much more than that. In the present day, schools at all levels must be active in the process of helping people adjust to life, living to the fullest, and in harmony with nature. The HFI is going to help us do that for our students. Research shows that students with healthy lifestyles are not only more productive, but feel a deeper attachment to the environment and to social justice. We must educate the whole person and that means that our mission isn’t just the old-fashioned university of the days of the Robber Barons and Senator McCarthy. We’ve got to equip people with healthy bodies and healthy attitudes. If we succeed in that quest, not only our students will thank us, but so will the Earth.”
Von Buskirk looked around the room. All the heads were nodding, except Dalrymple, who was shaking his head and rolling his eyes. Time to play one more card.
“As all of you know, “ VB continued, “I have a doctorate in education. I know what is best for our beloved UED at M. Mr. Dalrymple may know how to run his construction business, but I know how to improve the university.”
“Any other discussion?” asked the Chairman. Trustee Heloise Rivera raised her hand and was recognized.
“I would just like to say that Chancellor Von Buskirk’s plan sounds wonderfully bold and proactive to me. We do need to educate the whole person. I believe that will help students learn better, and if it helps to save the planet, I’m all for it!”
There was no further discussion and on a vote of 12 to 1, the Health and Fitness Initiative was approved.
Von Burkirk immediately moved to hire a vice-provost for health and fitness. An advertisement in The Chronicle of Higher Education brought in scores of applications. From them, VB chose Dr. Emmaline Bernadotte-Suarez. A former member of the U.S. Olympic women’s track team, Ms. Bernadotte-Suarez had impressed VB with her drill sergeant approach to the imperative of extending health and fitness issues into every aspect of the university. “I want to make the moral equivalent of war on America’s anti-health and anti-fitness culture!” she had declared in her interview. VB knew right away that she was the right person for the job. Bernadotte-Suarez soon acquired the unofficial title of “Health and Fitness Czar,” and indeed she easily matched the actual czars of Russia in her approach to dissent.
Within a week of assuming her office, Dr. Bernadotte-Suarez issued a bulletin to all faculty members stating that they would be expected to find ways to implement the goals of the HFI into all of their courses, with specific suggestions for most of them. That bulletin elicited some griping from a few retrograde professors. For example, Professor Jerome Holden of the Physics Department wrote back to her (copying the Chancellor) to say, “I fail to see how taking a week out from my Physics 101 course to have the students do a project on the workings of the Bow-Flex machine is going to help them learn the principles of physics. My interest is in getting students to learn a real body of knowledge, not worrying about what they eat and how much they exercise. If a kid doesn’t know his physics, I don’t care if he’s the biggest jock on campus.”
The HFI Czar shot back, “Chancellor Von Buskirk and I are shocked at your anti-health, anti-fitness ideology. Evidently you are blind to the overall benefits of a thorough-going commitment to the HFI. We are deeply sorrowed that you feel that you can sacrifice the physical welfare of your students when all we are asking is a reasonable accommodation in your syllabus. Are you not aware the U.S. Surgeon General has said that childhood obesity is just as much a threat to our nation as terrorism? Do you not think that the university, with all of its knowledge and resources, should help to solve this problem, just as it now helps to solve other societal problems such as global warming and economic development for our region? And let me point out that your demeaning reference in your email to ‘the biggest jock on campus’ is an apparent violation of the UED at M speech code, which bars hate speech from all campus communications. If you persist in your refusal to cooperate with the HFI, you may expect to face charges before the Judicial Committee.”
Professor Holden caved in. He had his students spend a week on the workings of the Bow-Flex machine, giving them a quiz at the end featuring questions like “The Bow- Flex Machine is supposed to improve a person’s body strength if used regularly. True or False?” However, he was so annoyed at the administration’s meddling that he decided to retire at the end of the school year. In filling his place, the Physics Department, mindful of the importance of keeping the HFI Czar happy, discarded the CVs of all candidates who admitted that they couldn’t run a mile in under six minutes and sometimes ate foods made with processed sugar. Only one candidate satisfied the requirements, Mamoud Abele, an ABD grad student from Ethiopia who could run like a gazelle and said that he had never gotten a taste for American sweets. At least, that is what the members of the committee thought he said – his English was very hard to understand.
When the school announced Abele’s hiring, Von Buskirk was quoted in the press release as saying, “The addition of such an extraordinarily fit and healthy new member of the Physics Department is an occasion to be celebrated at UED at M. This enhances the Health and Fitness Index of our faculty and provides an excellent role model for all of us.” Professor Abele was prominently featured on the UED at M website as proof of the school’s “deep and abiding commitment to the principles of health and fitness.” Unfortunately, students found that they could hardly understand Abele and most dropped his course.
The HFI registered other faculty triumphs that year, too. A militant vegan was hired in the Sociology Department; an aerobics devotee was hired in English; a marathoner was hired in Art History. A few of the H&F hires actually proved to be competent instructors. And of course, the administration also was improved. When the Dean of Student Affairs retired, he was replaced by a cross-country skiing enthusiast who promised to get half of the students out on the ski trails in January. Von Buskirk’s dream of a university that perfectly modeled all the aspects of a healthy lifestyle was coming true.
Reshaping the curriculum was just as important as getting a healthier and fitter faculty and administrative personnel. Under the guidance of Dr. Bernadotte-Suarez, most of the university’s departments added H&F-themed courses. There was, for example, Economics 312 (“Comparison Shopping for Sports Equipment”), Music 299 (“Tunes to Augment Your Workouts”), and Political Science 406 (“”Comparative Systems of Government Support for Health Programs”). Since Chancellor VB had informed the faculty that he thought that “good grades would be appropriate” in all H&F-themed courses to stimulate interest in them, students were flocking to them. Enrollments dropped in courses like American History, Logic, and Calculus, but no one said anything about that – in public at least.
To focus even greater attention on the importance of health and fitness, a new Department of Health and Fitness Studies was created. It was very popular with students. Interviewed in the UED at M school newspaper, The Middleburger (a name Von Buskirk hated because it seemed to “send the wrong message” about the school), freshman Gordy Simpkins said, “Heck yes, I’m majoring in H&F! I’d much rather take Principles of Badminton than Principles of Chemistry and Healthy Eating is a breeze compared with American Literature.” Asked if he was exercising more or eating differently since coming to campus, Gordy replied, “Well, no. I came here to have fun and get my degree. The H&F major just makes that a lot easier.”
UED at M’s promotional materials also were given a facelift to highlight the school’s new celebration of health and fitness. The dull old photos on the website of students studying in the library or doing lab work were dropped in favor of shots demonstrating students engaged in health and fitness activities. When one sharp-eyed administrator pointed out that a photo taken at a basketball game clearly showed one student with a hot dog in one hand and a beer in the other, it was carefully retouched so that the student appeared to have a cup of carrot juice and a granola bar instead. That sent the right message.
Much to Von Buskirk’s delight, his idea soon caught on at other campuses. H&F Initiatives started to spring up in California, Vermont, Massachusetts, Oregon. Soon they were everywhere. “Must demonstrate a commitment to health and fitness” appeared on many academic job postings, and applicants started including lines on their CVs about their diet and exercise regimens. Statements such as “I Grind my own flax-seed meal” and “Chocolate-free since 1998” became common. (Many were only paying lip service to H&F, but as one anonymous professor told The New York Times, “It’s the way the game is played now.”) Within five years, U.S. News had revised its college ranking system to include an H&F component
Occasionally, some writer would remark that American college students looked no more fit and healthy than they had before the great commitment to H&F, but proponents would pounce on such statements as proof that we needed to increase our efforts. They also made excellent use of a student survey on the impact of H&F on them. Fully 89% agreed with the statement, “My school’s emphasis on health and fitness has been of value to me.” Only 3% agreed with the statement, “My school’s emphasis on health and fitness was a complete waste of time because health and fitness means nothing to me.” What more proof could one ask for?
Thus, the H&F movement conquered American higher education. During its ascendancy, a few people noticed that a) American businessmen were hiring more and more foreign-educated workers for important positions and b) many American college graduates were taking jobs delivering pizza and selling video games in mall stores. Fortunately, no one had the bad manners to suggest that the H&F movement might have anything to do with those phenomena.
The events described here are fictitious and any resemblance between the characters and any living university administrator can’t be helped.