An Oklahoma university now requires new students to wear Fitbits

All students are required to meet strict fitness goals.

“This is just for their grades so they pass the class, like it always has been”, Mathews said. They used tables and charts to figure out the value of a jog or a game of pickup basketball or even cutting the grass with a push mower.

When students first log into the school’s information system, they consent to have data that is continuously tracked by Fitbit shared. That meant jotting down when you were running and so on, and all of this was given points.

“The paper and pen method was not very accurate”, said professor Fritz Huber of the Health, Leisure and Sports Sciences Department.

The Fitbit program is an extension of fitness requirements the school has had for decades as part of its “whole person education” philosophy, which offers pass/fail grades based on fitness activities.

Huber said Oral Roberts studied the fitness monitors for a couple of years before deciding to implement the new mandatory program.

A Fitbit Charge HR, which records various data points, is $150. Before, students would manually track their activity themselves, then turn in written logs to the school. The school says no other personal information will be recorded or stored by the university. Provost Kathaleen Reid-Martinez told Ars Technica that the issue has yet to come up.

“No other school is doing what we’re doing”. However it was not mentioned exactly how much physical activity students are required to do, although a report from The Tulsa World suggested that students need to walk at least 10,000 steps a day. The school implemented the system in September, and will now be incorporated with each new class until every single student is using the monitors.

Given that Oral Roberts, a religious university, forbids premarital sex in its honor code, this seemed like a particularly pertinent question for its students.