Northwestern University, a prestigious college in Illinois, recently adopted a policy that would punish students for making fat jokes.
The university included weight and height on its list of “protected characteristics” in its 2024 discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct policy, placing the traits alongside attributes like race and gender. Making jokes about these protected characteristics runs afoul of the policy and can result in sanctions for students, staff or faculty, according to the university.
“Inappropriate physical contact, comments, questions, advances, jokes, epithets, or demands based on one or more actual or perceived protected characteristics,” the policy reads. It also prohibits memes poking fun at fatness as students are told to refrain from posting “derogatory, demeaning, or hostile materials” related to weight on the internet. (RELATED: Elite University Raked In Almost $700 Million From Qatar)
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