NJ College Bans Chick-fil-A From Campus Despite Student Majority

Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
November 27, 2018Politics
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NJ College Bans Chick-fil-A From Campus Despite Student Majority
The Chick-fil-A restaurant is seen in Chantilly, Virginia on Jan. 2, 2015. (Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)

A New Jersey college has refused to bring a Chick-fil-A onto its campus, rebutting the top restaurant choice of its students.

Rider University recently circulated a survey among students, asking which restaurants they wanted to see the school bring on campus. Chick-fil-A was the top choice.

The university then claimed that the fast food chain couldn’t be brought onto campus because “their corporate values have not sufficiently progressed enough to align with those of Rider,” according to a Nov. 1 email sent to Rider students and obtained by Campus Reform.

Julia Pickett, a junior political science major and president of Rider’s Young Americans for Liberty chapter, told the openly conservative blog that the private college is free to make the decision but objected to the company’s corporate values being a deciding factor.

“They sell chicken, so as far as I am concerned that should be the focus. If people didn’t want to buy their food then they don’t have to,” she said. “I think that the administration of Rider felt that having Chick-fil-A on campus would cause unwanted controversy and felt that the easiest fix was to find another restaurant.”

University bans Chik-fil-A
Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey in a file photo. (Google Maps)

‘Focused on Food’

Chick-fil-A didn’t comment directly on the ban but sent a statement to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

“Chick-fil-A is a restaurant company focused on food, service, and hospitality, and our restaurants and licensed locations on college campuses welcome everyone. We have no policy of discrimination against any group, and we do not have a political or social agenda,” the statement said.

“More than 120,000 people from all different backgrounds and beliefs represent the Chick-fil-A brand.”

Rider University, with around 5,150 graduate and undergraduate students, is located in Lawrenceville outside of Princeton.

Rider Responds to Criticism

In a Nov. 23 letter, Rider University President Gregory G. Dell’Omo and Vice President for Student Affairs Leanna Fenneberg wrote: “Chick-fil-A was removed as one of the options based on the company’s record widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community.”

“We understand that some may view the decision as being just another form of exclusion. We want to be clear that this was not the spirit in which the decision was made. We fully acknowledge an organization’s right to hold these beliefs, just as we acknowledge the right for individuals in our community and elsewhere to also personally hold the same beliefs,” they added.

It was not clear if any other restaurants were banned from Rider’s campus or which restaurants were chosen by students behind the popular chain.

Chick-fil-A was founded by a Southern Baptist, S. Truett Cathy. Most of its locations are closed on Sundays as well as on Thanksgiving and Christmas in accordance with the founder’s Christian faith.

“He really believed that it was the Sabbath and you shouldn’t work on the Sabbath, and he lived it. He didn’t just talk it. He lived it—’cause he could’ve made billions of dollars more by opening on—over the years—by opening on Sunday. And he chose not to do that,” longtime customer Britt Kugler told the left-leaning NPR after Cathy died in 2014.

The current owner has also donated to organizations that seek to defend the traditional definition of marriage, which has upset some progressives. The chain is regularly praised for its charitable works.

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