Purdue University Faculty Wants Chick-fil-A Banned from Campus

The faculty at Purdue University are pushing back against a proposal to install a Chick-fil-A restaurant on campus. Professors have drafted a measure that would restrict the university’s ability to do business with companies they deem to not uphold “social justice” values.

According to a local news report, professors at Purdue University are looking to shut down plans to bring Chick-fil-A to campus. Faculty members at Purdue drafted a measure that would restrict Purdue’s ability to conduct business with third-party companies that do not uphold “social justice” values.

Despite the pressure from the faculty to ban Chick-fil-A from campus, Purdue officials claim that many students have asked them to bring the popular fast-food chain to campus. In fact, some students have even built student government campaigns around promises to bring Chick-fil-A to campus. “I want to be sensitive to it,” one official said. “But it’s something that students have called for for a long, long, long, long time. Student body presidents and their cabinets have actually run on that platform, to bring it to campus.”

A petition that was created on Change.org against bringing Chick-fil-A to Purdue had only 80 signatures on Friday. The petition’s creator argues that installing a Chick-fil-A location on campus will significantly harm the well-being of LGBT students.

As a future psychologist and current psychologist-in-training, I am aware of the overwhelming negative symptoms people experience due to discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity (e.g., depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, completed suicide).  What does Purdue think will happen to students’, faculty’s, and staff’s sense of safety and wellbeing when Chick Fil A is allowed on campus? Purdue espouses the need for diversity and inclusion, but then acts against those sentiments in situations such as this one. I really want to believe that Purdue wants to be inclusive, and I think we can do better in these areas by being thoughtful about our actions and how they may impact thousands of students, faculty, and staff.

Breitbart News reported earlier this month that faculty members at the University of Kansas similarly called for the removal of an existing Chick-fil-A location on their campus. The faculty council at the University of Kansas referred to the restaurant chain as a “bastion of bigotry.”