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Wearable Tech Fitbit

Christian college denies it's tracking student's sex habits via Fitbit exercise class

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

February 4, 2016 | 2 min read

Oklahoma's Oral Roberts has fully embraced the data-keeping powers of the Fitbit fitness tracker to ensure its students are making an average of 10,000 steps a day as part of a mandatory health class.

The Christian campus is using the wearable to track the fitness activities of its students with their output directly influencing their final grade in the module.

The announcement sparked fears on social media that some students may be kicked out if they were found to be partaking in activities which broke school rules.

With its religious teachings, the concern was that the data could be used to track and clamp down on pre-marital sex, and that the devices could track the sexual activity of the students, with the heart rate marking a very noticeable path on a graph that wouldn’t so easily be attributed to a midnight jog.

Mike Matthews, chief information officer at the college told Motherboard that "this is just for their grades so they pass the class, like it always has been, wearable technology is here to stay and we are leveraging it in the best way we can in a simplistic manner."

The wearables are optional with Oral Roberts giving students to chance to manually count their steps. In addition, their GPS data will not be synced with the campus’ records.

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