Cal Poly SLO faculty move to get 25-year-old Chick-Fil-A removed from campus

A Chick-fil-A sign is seen above one of its restaurants on July 28, 2012 in Bethesda, Maryland. A Chick-fil-A sign is seen above one of its restaurants on July 28, 2012 in Bethesda, Maryland. Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Cal Poly SLO faculty move to get 25-year-old Chick-Fil-A removed from campus 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

Fast food restaurant Chick-Fil-A may soon be kicked off campus at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, if a push by the school's academic senate to get the chain franchise removed is underscored by university President Jeffrey Armstrong.

Faculty that make up the campus organization point to Chick-Fil-A Foundation's history of donating to anti-LGBT causes, noting that its values are not consistent with those of the university.

In a vote Tuesday, the vast majority of the academic senate (38 out of 44) opted to recommend getting rid of the chicken chain's location despite its 25-year tenure on campus.

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"We don't sell pornography in the bookstore and we don't have a Hooters on campus — we already pre-select those kind of things based on our existing values," said academic senate Vice Chair Thomas Gutierrez to the on-campus publication Mustang News. "This is a similar thing, the difference is we're actually profiting from this. So our money, every dollar a student is spending at Chick-Fil-A, is going to these causes that are in violation of our values."



In response, university spokesman Matt Lazier released two statements. One voiced a hesitation to "censor" a business because of different viewpoints, as KSBY reports. In a subsequent comment, Lazier stated that the school aims to be inclusive above all else:

"While university administration passionately disagrees with the values of some of the organizations the president of Chick-fil-A has chosen to make personal donations to, we do not believe in responding to intolerance with intolerance," he told KSBY. "Rather, we must model our values of inclusion – that means upholding the rights of others to have different perspectives and ensuring there is space in our community for differing viewpoints and ideologies, even those that may be in direct conflict with our own."

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If the university does wind up deciding to remove the restaurant, it would need to curtail a five-year contract extension on the location, signed in 2018.

It would likely be expensive to terminate the contract, but the academic senate hopes that the university will see that "(business) partners are held to the same high diversity and inclusion standards of as the rest of the campus community."

It's not the first time this Chick-Fil-A location has sparked a debate. In 2012, about 50 protesters held a national "Kiss-In" at the Cal Poly franchise — the only one in San Luis Obispo County — to protest the company president's anti-LGBT comments.

In the Bay Area, local city officials are similarly attempting to navigate what to do about Chick-Fil-A stores. In April, San Jose politicians openly considered ways to make a planned San Jose Airport Chick-Fil-A the "gayest in the country."

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.

