Stanford Student Complains School Dining Hall Didn’t Accommodate His ‘Disordered Eating’
“I never sought help with my disordered eating from Stanford. But it’s not fair to place the blame squarely on my shoulders.”
Stanford student Holden Foreman clearly has an issue here, but it’s not clear what the school’s responsibility is for his problem. My favorite thing about the piece is that it even has a trigger warning.
He writes at the Stanford Daily:
Stanford’s dining hall system did not work with my disordered eating. That can change.
Content warning: This column contains references to disordered eating.
Sharp stomach pains distracted me as I sit in a CS section during my first quarter at Stanford in the fall of 2017. I hadn’t eaten enough that morning, as my mind convinced me to take a very small portion of the “healthiest” vegetarian food I could find in the dining hall. I was too stressed to even attempt a dining hall lunch, and was now stuck waiting until dinner.
After thinking about my hunger for most of the section, I made my way to the dining hall after class, but I could bring myself to eat only a plate of grilled cauliflower. And before I even finished that, it was time to go to my nighttime economics section.
The specific type of disordered eating I experience has not been diagnosed, but it can be described as a compulsion to eat less than needed when I’m either in social settings or when I have trouble estimating the amount of food I’m consuming.
In theory, Stanford’s dining halls present students with the opportunity to eat as much as they need given its buffet format. Yet students like me may struggle to take enough of any of the available food when they are charged with portioning it themselves…
Despite my struggles, I never sought help with my disordered eating from Stanford. But it’s not fair to place the blame squarely on my shoulders. Simple changes to campus dining could help students without relying on their time and energy when they are not ready to seek help.
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Comments
Blow darts.
Desert island.
Oh good grief. Maybe Stanford should provide Mommies to sit next to these infants and cut up their veggies and make sure they clean their plates.
This individual is not ready for college. A University like Stanford has all kinds of resources that he could have utilized. Whether it was a referral from the Health Services or some sort of counseling, I’m virtually certain that a few minutes browsing the Stanford website would have found him some help.
If he “self-identified” as having an eating disorder, then he knew he had a problem and should have taken charge of getting help. And if he wasn’t prepared to do that, then his parents should have been involved.
Part of going to college is learning how to live on your own and identify the resources that you need to be successful. Most universities have hot and cold running medical and mental health services. Most universities can provide counseling services across a wide range of issues. Most universities will accommodate virtually any disability. It is not hard to get help.
Good luck to the organization that hires this child.
Or, maybe, he should just wear a sign?
“My self-identified neuroses:
Blah
Blah
Blah”
Or maybe just brownbag edible food for himself.
Can I still say “brownbag?”
Everything is awful. And it’s somebody’s fault!
I didn’t tell anybody… but somebody should have known I was in trouble!
This guy is going to make somebody a great sullen wife.
Get a grip, snowflake.
I long for the days when the response to such people was, “Tough. Deal with it!”
Short of force feeding the student, what should Stanford do? Is there no one in academia who is willing to take responsibility for their own life?
has not been diagnosed
IOW, it’s in your head, dingleberry.
“OMG, I never should have left home! And the people out here in the world should know how to deal with people like me who are nuts while validating my every neuroses!”
Dr. Bob has the ultimate solution for this problem…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw
The farce on its face is bad enough, but then he didn’t even seek any help for it and is still blaming the university!
Just expel him and end this.
What a whiner! Get a dorm refrigerator!!
Take whatever food you’re going to need with you in a backpack!
This does not reflect well on the quality of students admitted to Stanford.
I suspect they’re not using any standard admissions exams, but are admitting students mostly based on their race and commitment to “diversity.”
Perhaps the dining hall doesn’t accomodate his disordered eating, but the rest of the school accomodates his disordered thinking.
Every factitious disorder is just a different label for “mentally ill.” I suggest that he/she/it treat it with liberal amounts of marijuana, not that it will fix it, but it will keep he/she/it in the basement where he/she/it can’t annoy the rest of us.
Was some school official supposed to be monitoring him eat? “It’s not all my fault”.
Huh?
This was published?
Of course it was! Dude was VP or CTO or something there!
He would fit right in at Oberlin
Wait, I knew that name sounded familiar.
Is this crybaby of any relation to the clout chasing white knighter for that batshit crazy WaPo fembot?
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2022/06/08/he-him-wapo-software-engineer-seizes-on-female-wapo-reporters-tweet-asking-felicia-sonmez-to-please-stop/
Wait, he’s on LinkedIn…it’s gotta be him!
Stanford check
WaPo check
https://www.linkedin.com/in/holdenforeman/
Does ‘eating disorder’ really mean you have to vomit your mental illness all over the school paper? 21st century where insanity is a status symbol
The victim needs to recognize the problem and call it by its name before any fix is possible. It is not Disordered Eating! It is an Eating Disorder! This person has serious problems that go beyond “disordered eating”. I’m sure mom accommodated this psychosis with a special menu when professional help would have been more appropriate
A long time ago, I had a disordered eating problem. I needed more napkins than usual.
Ha Ha Ha LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Note, that he was VP or CTO or whatever of the newspaper when it published his drivel. A nice conspiracy theory (nice because it rings true) would be that he was interviewing at WaPo at the time, and needed some journalistic experience to boost his resume.
If you are not into conspiracy theories – it could be just an assignment in business or pre-law class “How could I sue the school if I really wanted”
So, snowflakes mommy isn’t bringing cheesy poofs and spaghetti o’s to his basement lair anymore and he is helpless to feed himself. Funny, at 20 I and many others were in full battle rattle jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft at 0200 and the Jumpmaster didn’t even hold our hands.
Oops, i was 19 at the time with Grenada and Panama in front of me.
I should point something out. While the manchild snowflake is trying to figure out how to feed himself, at that age my Grandfather waded onto to Omaha Beach and walked across Europe into Germany. He wasnt on sabbatical either