Yale University has just made academic history by ruling that a student who weighs 90 pounds is not fit enough to study in its campus.

Frances Chan, a 20-year old history major at Yale, was ordered to pack more weight, or else pack her stuff and go on medical leave.

The question that follows is not so much about why, but how can a prestigious institution of higher learning not have learned that Asian genes make for a smaller frame.

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Frances Chan, from New Jersey, has a last name and physical features that easily give away her Asian lineage. 

Asians normally have a smaller, leaner body frame compared to Caucasians, and weighing 90 pounds is not considered an abnormality nor an indication of illness in that part of the world.

Yale University officials believe, however, that Frances Chan could be suffering from an eating disorder, which accounts for her low body weight.  

The school had forced her to undergo weigh-ins every week and even sent her for mental health consultations, convinced that the 5-foot-2 girl has an eating disorder.

Determined to stay in school, Frances had been binging on junk food, ice cream and chocolates to gain weight.  

But weeks of doing that has only resulted to a 2-pound gain, which did not satisfy the school.

Angry and disgruntled over the school's ruling, Frances turned to media to narrate her weight struggle, which is far removed from the weight struggle that many Americans know of.

"I don't have an eating disorder. And I will not let Yale cause me to develop one," she wrote in an article published by the Huffington Post.

In the article, Frances narrated how her whole family had remained naturally skinny despite gobbling up Taiwanese beef noodles, pasta and cheesecake prepared by her mother.

She ended her essay with a very telling commentary on how Yale, acting as it did on her case, had played the role of fashion magazines that dictate how the 'perfect body' should be like.

She defiantly drew the line on her school's absurd ruling, and in the process, drew media attention to her plight.

Frances' dilemma with the Ivy League school has been picked up by US media and has been trending on the web in the last few days.

Yale's press secretary, Tim Conroy, said in a statement that federal regulations prevent them from commenting on individual student cases.