Faculty at Cal Poly want to kick Chick-fil-A off campus. The Academic Senate, the faculty’s governing body at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, voted to boot the bird last week. A resolution “proposed in light of recent news the fast food chain’s charity arm, the Chick-fil-A Foundation, continues to give money to anti-LGBTQ organizations,” passed “overwhelmingly,” according to KCBX.
Cal Poly isn’t the only university supporting equality by voting against Chick-fil-A.
The Student Government Association at Trinity University in Texas, a Christian-linked school according to CBN News, also voted to ban Chick-fil-A from its campus.
“The negative consequences of having Chick-fil-a on campus outweigh the desires of those who are in favor of keeping it on campus,” Trinity’s students said in their recommendation.
Cal Poly’s “values statement includes language that identifies LGBTQ as a classification of individuals that we want to embrace in our diversity and inclusion model,” Thomas Gutierrez, the Academic Senate’s vice-chair who introduced the resolution, said. “Then you have an organization that regularly and publicly shows up in the national news in great tension with this…so if you have a mission statement that indicates that you value inclusivity and diversity, then you should be making your business decisions based on that.”
Gutierrez does not expect Cal Poly’s president, Jeffery Armstrong, to take action to break the fast food retailer’s contract and expel the chicken chain.
Chick-fil-A has increasingly come under scrutiny in recent months.
Several cities, including San Antonio, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, voted to remove Chick-fil-A from their airports.
Meanwhile, Texas lawmakers last week tried to pass a “Save Chick-fil-A” anti-gay “religious freedom” bill. It failed, thanks to the newly-formed LGBTQ Caucus.
The company’s founders and charitable arm have donated millions of dollars to anti-LGBT organizations. Among the recipients to the family’s fortune is at least one anti-gay hate group.