"Fat Studies" will be a part of at Oregon State's academic curriculum in spring 2018 to teach students how "weight-based oppression" is absolutely a social justice issue that needs addressing, Campus Reform reported on Thursday.

The course will examine “body weight, shape, and size as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and ability.”

The course aims to equip those taking it to “counter weightism perpetuated throughout various societal institutions.”

Class professor Patti Lou-Watkins claimed that one of her aims is to convey to students that fat oppression is just a cog in a larger oppressive wheel.

“My course now frames body image disturbances more as a function of oppressive societal structures than of individual pathology,” Lou-Watkins wrote about the syllabus in a 2012 academic journal.

Lou-Watkins continued, “I grew to embrace feminist pedagogy in terms of course content as well as classroom practices. My course now frames body image disturbances more as a function of oppressive societal structures than of individual pathology.”