A group of students and faculty at an elite Catholic education say they don’t want food to open a restaurant on their Indiana campus because of the restaurant chain’s frequent donations to religion groups.
Roughly 180 University of Notre Dame students and faculty have signed an open letter calling on the school’s Campus Dining division to nix the proposed new shop.
The movement gained steam after two undergrad students wrote a letter to the editor to the Observer, a college newspaper, titled “Keep Chick-fil-A away,” Campus Reform reported Monday.
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The letter writers, Tilly Keeven-Glascock and Joey Jegier, accused Chick-fil-A of donating millions to “queerphobic groups,” which they said include the nonprofit Fellowship of Christian Athletes. And they objected to owner Dan Cathy’s personal donations to organizations like the National Christian Charitable Foundation, which they alleged “funds hate groups.”
Roughly 180 University of Notre Dame students and faculty have signed an open letter calling on the school’s Campus Dining division to nix the proposed new Chick-fil-A.
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Fox News reported in 2019 that Chick-fil-A said it would no longer donate to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army because of similar criticisms and had cut off other groups as early as 2012.
Keeven-Glascock and Jegier also claimed that because the restaurant chain gets its food from industrialized farming, it’s bad for the environment, “deplorable” and places a “burden” on “marginalized communities.”
“North America has an obsession with meat like no other country on Earth and it is helping destroy the planet,” wrote the duo, a university senior and junior. (North America is a continent.)
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They also argued that Chick-fil-A’s menu of “fried chicken and potatoes…does not supply an array of options suitable for a diverse campus community” and argued vegans and vegetarians “would receive little benefit.”
In their letter to the editor, Keeven-Glascock and Jegier included a link to the open letter attempting to strong-arm the school’s Campus Dining to reconsider choosing Chick-fil-A.
In addition to more than 150 students, at least 26 faculty members had signed the document as of Tuesday evening.
“Students at other universities, such as NYU and Northeastern, have made headlines in their attempts to block Chick-fil-A,” they wrote. “We have no plans for such a large-scale disruption; rather, we wish to resolve this concern before it transforms into a larger controversy.”
Notre Dame and Chick-fil-A did not immediately respond to Fox News requests for comment.
Chick-fil-A was founded in Georgia in 1946 and since then has been closed on Sundays because its founder, Truett Cathy, refused to force his employees to miss a day of rest and worship.
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Last week it was named the United States’ top fast food chain in terms of quality, cleanliness, reliability, and customer service for the seventh year in a row. Locations around the country have gone viral for positive customer service interactions so often that it’s become a meme.
It also suffered a shortage of some of its signature sauces in May due to high demand and global supply chain hiccups.
