Students at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York—a Jesuit institution—are calling for Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, to be disinvited as commencement speaker.
A petition posted at Change.org protests Dolan’s invitation to address the graduates on May 17 on the basis of what the students claim are his “homophobic comments” and involvement “with sexual abuse scandals dealing with clergy of the church.”
A report at The College Fix, however, observed, “Missing from the petition are examples of wrongdoing regarding the child abuse scandal or homophobic comments from Dolan.”
The petition states, “With the growing attention toward sexual assault on the Le Moyne campus, students have felt that keeping Cardinal Dolan as commencement speaker completely opposes what we have advocated against.”
The petition likens the protest to Le Moyne students’s #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations, as well as a vigil for three Muslim students who were killed in North Carolina in February.
As of Monday evening, the petition had 626 supporters.
Le Moyne president Linda LeMura praised the students’s activism.
“In reality I see it as a great call for celebration. Our students are questioning decisions we’ve made. They want to understand the rationale at a deeper level,” she told CNYCentral.com. “They’re indicating concern for members of society that are historically marginalized.”