Emailing a student body about a weight loss program is typically not an offensive move, but it is when the school is openly targeting students with "elevated" body mass index (BMI).

According to the Associated Press, Bryn Mawr College issued a formal apology for such an email. The suburban Philadelphia school's athletic department emailed its 1,700+ students with details to a weight loss program in which participants' BMI need to be high enough to enter.

NBC 10 Philadelphia obtained a screenshot of the email, which quickly went viral online as its recipients called it intruding and rude. But the program has been offered before and it is geared toward offering advice, nutritional tips and other forms of consultation. Bryn Mawr spokesman Matt Gray said the program was not criticized in its first two years of existence. He said students' BMI came from the school's health center, but was unsure how the data was collected.

Dr. Kay Kerr, apologized for unfortunate requirement for the physical education course.

"On behalf of everyone involved with this program, I sincerely apologize to anyone who has been upset or offended by our communications, and I want to reassure the community that we will rethink our approaches and our assumptions moving forward," Kerr said in the email.

Rudrani Sarma, a junior at Bryn Mawr, was among a group of students invited to take the course, which she took to mean the school had done so because of her health information. She wrote back to the school, accusing the department of "fat shaming" its students, but she was especially infuriated because the school's health center previously treated her for an eating disorder.

"I felt very targeted," she told ABC 6. "It didn't feel like the school had my best interest at heart. Knowing my personal history, it was an e-mail telling me to lose weight."