Trinity University, a private Christian university affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and located in San Antonio, Texas, is at odds with its student government which passed a resolution to remove Chick-fil-A food from its dining hall menu, but the university administration is not a fan of the resolution.
In an e-mail last week, soon after news of the resolution went public, Trinity University Vice President for strategic communications and marketing, Tess Coody-Anders said, “We do not make vendor decisions based on their political or religious beliefs.” Coody-Anders added, “Based on these criteria, Chick-fil-A appears to be a preferred vendor by students and the broader Trinity community.”
It is important to note that the resolution would remove Chick-fil-A food from the dining hall menu, as there is no physical presence of Chick-fil-A at Trinity University. It is a different type of protest or boycott of Chick-fil-A, as other protests were at universities which had or were going to have a Chick-fil-A location on-campus.
As we reported at Accuracy in Academia, supporters of the student government resolution took issue with the restaurant’s philanthropic support of Christian organizations. The resolution’s supporters alleged that Chick-fil-A continues to donate to “anti-LGBT+” organizations and causes. Some of the organizations named by the anti-Chick-fil-A crowd were the Salvation Army, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and the Paul Anderson Youth Home.
The university’s LGBT+ community claimed that the use of Chick-fil-A food in its dining hall is a “drastic assault on their identities and beings as a result of Chick-fil-A’s ideals and actions.” The resolution claimed that diversity and inclusion, when compared to Chick-fil-A’s values, are “mutually exclusive.”
