Eating Disorders at Barnard Lead to Student, Admin Rift

Today marks the beginning of either Love Your Body Week or Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2008 at Barnard College, depending on who you ask.

The two events, one organized by students and one by the administration, were each planned to educate students about eating disorders at Barnard. But the scheduling of both at the same time has raised questions among students about Barnard administration’s willingness to take on the issue of eating disorders.

“It seems like they’re competing with us—we should all work together for the cause,” said Marissa Mazek, BC ’10 and Love Your Body Week organizer.

Barnard’s Furman Counseling Center will hold two events targeting eating disorders. Students Against Eating Disorders, a non-recognized student group, used unofficial channels to reserve space for Love Your Body Week. National Eating Disorder Awareness Week was technically last week, but the groups pushed events by one week to accommodate for midterms.

To Dr. Julia Sheehy, Barnard’s eating disorders specialist, the two separate agendas represent an abundance of awareness on campus. “The story here is the disorders which sap energy, narrow lives and perspectives, preoccupy people, and endanger health—not the seeming lack of collaboration between two distinct groups,” Sheehy said. “The two groups have different things to offer and may engage different students. The more eating disorder awareness the better.”

Yet the process of creating eating disorder awareness programs has exposed a fault-line between the way students and some administrators perceive Barnard’s handling of and attitude toward body preoccupation on college campuses. Some administrators claim the college addresses the issue head-on, while some students and professors say it sweeps the problem under the rug while promoting the clichéd image of a “strong, beautiful Barnard woman.”

Members of Students Against Eating Disorders say anorexia and bulimia are pervasive at all colleges, including Barnard. As a women’s college, the group says that Barnard has a specific responsibility to address these issues.

Yet even the group’s outsiders, like Nicole Mizrahi, BC ’10, said that she notices the frequency of eating disorders among peers. “It’s not rare that you hear someone making themselves throw up in a bathroom stall next to you,” Mizrahi said.

Students Against Eating Disorders formed in Fall 2007 after Leslie Lipton, BC ’09 and author of Unwell, wanted to be more proactive about eating disorder awareness. Lipton regularly speaks at high schools and colleges about her book and struggle with anorexia, which Barnard promoted on its Web site.

Last year, Lipton saw that Barnard had not planned any events during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, so she approached Furman. Initially, Lipton was told that since there was no student interest, “it’s not worth their time or energy to plan for these events,” she said.

Furman eventually agreed to have Lipton speak, and advertised the talk the day of the event by distributing cards in Hewitt dining hall. Three students attended, a number Lipton said could not be attributed to lack of student interest, but rather late notice.
“If I could get a group of students together to show that students want these things, I could get the counseling center to get behind us and help us out,” Lipton said that she thought after the event.

SAED eventually formed as a Facebook group with 35 members. The group did not petition for Student Government Association recognition—and the funding that comes with it—because Lipton and Mazek decided to concentrate efforts on Love Your Body Week rather than navigating the time-consuming red tape surrounding club funding.

The group, which meets weekly, used unofficial means to sort out logistics. The College Activities Office will mount a banner atop Barnard Hall, political science professor Dennis Dalton helped reserve space, and MacIntosh Activities Council is reserving a table for information in Java City. Students say they are pleased to have the full support of Dean of Studies Karen Blank.

“The purpose of Love Your Body Week is to raise awareness of the significant and damaging presence of eating disorders and disordered thoughts about food, the body and perfectionism at both Barnard and Columbia,” Mazek wrote in a group statement. On Thursday, the Barnard Bacchantae will sing at a panel on the perception of beauty.
“We want to offer hope and encourage our fellow students—as well as faculty and staff—to feel better about themselves and their bodies,” Mazek said in a group statement, adding that they chose a name for the week that seemed the most inclusive.

Courtney Martin, BC ’02 and author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, will speak at Monday’s event. “At Barnard, I felt like I was surrounded by the most dynamic, brilliant, fun and fascinating women,” Martin said. “But I was also surrounded by the most anxious, depressed, body-aware, and fitness-preoccupied women. That contradiction was so glaring for me.”

When asked about eating disorders awareness, Barnard President Judith Shapiro and Dean of the College Dorothy Denburg mentioned the counseling center’s resources: one full-time eating disorders specialist, an internist, a nutritionist, and a health educator.

“There’s an assumption you can’t grow intellectually, and you can’t make use of academic resources if you’re not fully well, physically and spiritually,” Denburg said. “We have confronted eating disorders in terms of support for students who are dealing with them. We’ve been ahead of many other places in taking very proactive approach to wellness.”

Martin said one full-time specialist is not sufficient for dealing with the number of Barnard students who are not at ease with their bodies.

Martin attributes eating disorders to perfectionism. “The Barnard administration is invested in making Barnard look like a safe, attractive place for prospective students. They are probably reluctant to admit that mental health issues on the campus are so pervasive,” Martin said. Not acknowledging the degree of eating disorders at Barnard “would be appealing for Barnard’s profile, as opposed to giving this glossy veneer that there aren’t those issues at Barnard’s campus.”

Mazek pointed to the administrative response as a reason for the week of awareness. “We’re just trying to get everyone’s attention here and make them realize there is something they can do besides push it under the carpet,” she said.

In response to such claims, Denburg pointed to her arm as she said, “You struck a little nerve there.”

Lipton had recovered from her eating disorder by the time she was looking at colleges. “At that point, I expected Barnard to have more of a sensitivity to this issue, more of a desire to embrace trying to prevent eating disorders,” she said.

Dalton said that the college must address eating disorders more vigorously as a unified community. “The faculty must be concerned with the health of the students because it’s part of the community, so that we feel their joys and sorrows” he said, later adding that throughout his time at Barnard, many students have approached him with eating disorders.

Mazek said while the resource exists, Furman has what she describes as a “tsk tsk, you naughty girl policy” that sometimes scares students seeking help away. “I had a lot of trouble with an eating disorder last year. They made me feel like I had done something wrong,” she said, so she sought the help of an outside therapist. Wellness—a class that teaches seven types of wellbeing and fulfils the physical education requirement—teaches students to scrutinize food decisions and calculate their body fat, a number that may induce self-consciousness.

Yet Sheehy said, “The college takes the disorders very seriously and has responded beautifully,” and that the two simultaneous series of events is a positive sign. “They’re doing their own events and we’re doing our own events. I didn’t know when they were doing theirs. I think it’s fantastic that there’s a student-run organization that’s concerned about eating disorders because students are able to respond in different ways than we clinicians can.”

SAED representatives spoke with Barnard’s president-elect Debora Spar briefly when she visited Barnard. “I would love to talk more about it and see if more eating disorder awareness can be worked into the new vision of what Barnard is going to become,” Lipton said.

joy.resmovits@columbiaspectator.com