Johns Hopkins students vote to oppose Chick-fil-A on campus

WASHINGTON — Students at Johns Hopkins University are saying no to a Chick-fil-A on campus.

The Baltimore, Maryland, school’s student government voted earlier this week to block  any effort by Chick-fil-A to open a store on campus, citing the opposition to gay marriage the chain’s CEO Dan Cathy shared beginning in 2012.

“Visiting prospective and current students, staff, faculty, and other visitors who are members of the LGBTQ+ community or are allies would be subjected to the microaggression of supporting current or future Chick-fil-A development plans,” the Student Government Association’s resolution says.

The resolution says the SGA “vehemently opposes” Cathy’s anti-gay marriage stance. The SGA mentions one instance in particular — when, following the Supreme Court’s ruling supporting marriage equality in 2013, Cathy said it was a “sad day for our nation.”

The SGA notes that it is not the first school that wants to keep Chick-fil-A off campus. It says other colleges such as North Carolina State University and Indiana University have already launched efforts to ban Chick-fil-A restaurants already on their campuses.

It is not yet clear if there were plans to build a Chick-fil-A on Johns Hopkins’ campus, reports TIME, although many students have speculated that the chain might open a location in a new building under construction on campus.

“The SGA does not support the proposal of a Chick-fil-A, in a current or future sense, particularly on any location that is central to student life,” the resolution says.

Sarah Beth Hensley

Sarah Beth Hensley is the Digital News Director at WTOP. She has worked several different roles since she began with WTOP in 2013 and has contributed to award-winning stories and coverage on the website.

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