Boycott Chick-Fil-A!
National fast food restaurant chain (and notable section of the UCO food court) Chick-Fil-A has been in some hot water recently following statements from the company’s president and COO, Dan Cathy, concerning marriage equality in the United States.
“We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. (…) We operate as a family business (…) our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that,” he said in an interview with Baptist Press last month. “We intend to stay the course. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”
Read more: Auburn University professor Roderick Long on the evolving definition of marriage over the centuries.
As a result of Cathy’s comments, and the millions of dollars the company has paid to anti-gay lobbies over the years, many individuals and groups (and, unconstitutionally, two US cities) are calling for a boycott of the restaurant.
UCO’s mission statement says that it “Exists to help students learn by providing transformative education experiences so that they may become productive, creative, ethical and engaged citizens and leaders serving our global community. UCO contributes to the intellectual, cultural, economic and social advancement of the communities and individuals it serves.”
This is incongruous with the statements and financial decisions made by Cathy, and by proxy, Chick-Fil-A. As such, it is in the best interest of students at UCO to refuse to purchase food from the Chick-Fil-A in the Nigh University Center, or eat at any UCO event Chick-Fil-A caters at.
It may be helpful, in the interest of clarifying my position, to think of the university as three separate yet integral entities: UCO the economic enterprise, UCO the state institution, and UCO the student body.
UCO the economic enterprise is of course free to make whatever business decisions they choose. UCO the state institution is constitutionally unable to evict Chick-Fil-A from their space in the NUC for fear of violating the free speech clause of the First Amendment. UCO the student body, on the other hand, is under no such constitutional restriction, nor are we bound by any contract to eat any of the fare in the food court, much less Chick-Fil-A.
This is not a call for the university to get rid of the restaurant; simply put, this is a call for the “productive, creative, ethical and engaged” students of the university to “contribute to the intellectual, cultural, economic and social advancement of our community” with our dollars and refuse to fund hate any longer.
Boycott Chick-Fil-A!