The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey Student Senate will ask the college president to consider dismissing Chick-fil-A from its campus.
The 27-member Senate voted 14-10, with two abstensions, to send a letter of resolution to Stockton College President Herman J. Saatkamp asking Chick-fil-A to leave campus. The Senate needed 14 votes for approval. Senate President AJ Vervoort abstains unless his vote is needed to break a tie.
According to Vervoort, the letter of resolution will be sent to Saatkamp on Monday morning, Nov. 26. It will then be up to Saatkamp if he wants to look into breaking the 10-year contract with the chicken franchise that has weathered a storm of controversy since comments made by its president over the summer.
The Stockton Affiliated Services contract is with Chartwell’s, which then has contracts with the restaurants in the Campus Center; however, money from the college students’ meal plans goes to Chick-fil-A automatically.
“We look forward to seeing the resolution, and the president will take it under advisement,” Special Assistant to President Saatkamp Sharon Schulman said.
“We will weigh the pros and cons and take the proposal under serious advisement.”
Over the summer, it was reported that Chick-fil-A’s charitable organization, the WinShape Foundation, donates to the Family Research Council, which reportedly lobbied against a resolution that would denounce Uganda’s so-called “Kill the Gays” bill. The bill calls for the death penalty for anyone who commits an act of homosexuality, which has been deemed a crime in Uganda.
The Family Research Council denied it was opposing the resolution, stating its goal was to clarify inaccuracies about homosexuality being a fundamental human right across the globe.
A recent survey of Stockton students found support for keeping the restaurant on campus. Of the roughly 1,600 students who participated in the survey, 66 percent voted to keep Chick-fil-A on campus. According to Student Senator Ben Peoples, about 300 people surveyed opted not to answer the question.
“Chick-fil-A was causing problems to arise on campus, and we could see the division,” Vervoort said. “We want all students to feel welcomed and supported.”
According to Student Senate Vice President David Lamando, members of the Stockton Pride Alliance, which represents the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community at the college, have attended the Senate’s last two meetings to express concerns about being discriminated against.
According to Lamando, they feel the discrimination is being encouraged by Chick-fil-A’s presence at Stockton.
The vote was close, and not everyone spoke out in support of the resolution. Senators and students alike felt the issue was a matter of free speech.
“No one can tell you that what you feel is wrong,” Student Senator Matthew Monte said. “We were elected to serve the students, and 66 percent want to keep Chick-fil-A. I’m going to side with my people.”
Senators are elected by the student body. The top 27 vote-getters are elected to the Senate, which then chooses the president among themselves. Senators don’t take an oath of office, and don’t swear to uphold the Constitution.
“Our concern is with Stockton policies,” Vervoort said. “We follow those values and the school’s mission statement.”
“Chick-fil-A does not violate our mission statement,” Student Senator William Inacio said. “Why should we remove them because they have opinions that we don’t support personally?”
“Just by them being here, we support them whether I buy anything from them or not,” Student Senator Kaitlin Cibenko said. “I’m not comfortable with that.”
“Stockton is a public institution, so if you pay taxes in New Jersey, you’re supporting Chick-fil-A,” Student Senator Jessica Carey said.
Some senators felt it wasn’t a matter of free speech, but more a matter of human rights. Student Senator Manar Hussein believes the Senate vote now opens the door for discussion of other issues involving human rights.
“Regardless of if I’m the only one who feels a certain way or if there are many, if even one person advocates for human rights in another country, I expect the same amount of research to be done,” Hussein said.
“With Chick-fil-A, it was such an uproar, I ask that you be fair to whatever demographic brings an issue, out of respect. I expect you to do the same research for everyone.”
“All issues will be addressed in a serious matter,” Vervoort said following the meeting. “We will deal with the issues that have the highest impact among Stockton students.”
Student reaction was mixed.
“I think you launched a missile to kill a mouse,” Stockton senior Josh Kropkof said during the public comment portion of the meeting.
“I’m very concerned with what the Senate will look at in the future. If a group on campus is saying something controversial, will the Senate bring that group forward for explusion? If a professor is saying things that are pretty offensive, will the Senate ask him to be dismissed? While you congratulate yourselves, remember you imposed your will on the student body. You’re supposed to represent the students instead of pushing your own agendas.”
“Anytime you vote on the side of human rights, it’s the right thing to do,” Stockton senior Don Scheer said. “This is the first step toward supporting human rights.”
What's in your gas tank?
LOL! You are bad at math like you are at logic, politics and justice. A vote of 14 - 10 means nearly 2/3rds. voted in support of the resolution - not half as you lied.
So, Pundit, it's time to review... 50% voted FOR - (this is apparently a requirement to pass). 37% voted AGAINST. 7.5% to 11% ABSTAINED (depending on what happened to the missing vote). I know of no situation where ABSTENTIONS are counted as FORs. If 50% (as in this case) are required to pass a vote you need HALF...and that's exactly what they got. Now do you need anymore help with the math?
Actually, I can't believe what you are saying and can only attribute your continued attempt to defend your display of a lack of any real grasp of basic mathematics to your unwillingness to admit your error.
You might want to tone down your insults. The only effect that has is to make you look like a long winded buffoon. And that is not something an important engineer like you would want to be known as. I pray you are not so abusive around your family.
Again, this is about Chick spending millions to support several anti-gay groups that lobby for harmful anti-gay legislation here and around the world, and using student funds to support those groups. FRC is only one of those groups, and I provided a link to a photograph of the document by FRC showing they lobbied against DADT, DOMA, as well as the resolution to oppose the "kill the gays" bill. Your desire to rationalize their lobbying efforts ignores this documented fact.
Chick-fil-A does not spend "millions" in the effort to thwart same-sex marriage advocates. NOH8 documented that Chick-fil-A's charitable arm, the WinShape Foundation, donated $1.7 million dollars to such causes in 2009. With assets of more than $60 million dollars the spending of $1.7 million does not constitute a huge priority. In addition, Mr. Cathy's personal fortune is estimated to be over $1.3 billion dollars. Surely if Mr. Cathy was desirous of waging a real publicity campaign against same-sex marriage he does not lack the funding. Mr. Cathy is dedicated to supporting traditional marriage and the family. An aside to that effort is his opposition to same-sex marriage. That does not equate to what you wish to paint as a picture of hatred and murder towards homosexuals. You refuse to accept and understand the facts, Mr. Johnson, so I will stand aside while you continue to propagate your misinformation.
Not all positions are "equally valid" as it seems you suggest when you recognize "a company who feels deeply about torturing babies should be sent packing". But this goes beyond "feeling deeply", to actually funding that harm, using student funds. Remember that Chick is using funds to promote numerous laws that deny equal rights. Those who support equal rights are not trying to deny those equal rights to others. Only one side is using the law to harm the other. Equality harms no one, while discrimination results in harm in a wide variety of ways, as documented in history, science, and law, as well as on this thread. So are you really ready to say; "good for Chick for choosing a side" when that side funds harming others needlessly, and when equal rights harms no one? These are not equally valid positions. Prejudice and discrimination result in needless suffering and death.
As you note, in 2009 alone, they spent $1.7 million to deny marriage equality. Other documentation shows: " The company gave $2 million to anti-gay groups in 2009 alone." "Chick-fil-A gave $2 million to seven anti-gay groups in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available, according to Equality Matters' analysis of its charitable giving." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-much-money-chick-fil-a-gives-to-anti-gay-groups-2012-7#ixzz2DBbplsje So that's 4 million in just 2 years, yet they have been funding anti gay groups since at least 2003, and that doesn't include figures for 2011, and 2012. Clearly, as I previously documented, Chick has spent millions promoting anti-gay prejudice and discrimination. The fact they have millions more available, does not alter that fact. Clearly, it is you who is promoting misinformation including your attempts to defame me personally rather than focusing on the documented evidence, including the well documented fact through history, science, and law, that prejudice and discrimination result in needless suffering and death.
"The Court finds that neither Congress' claimed legislative justifications nor any of the proposed reasons proffered by BLAG constitute bases rationally related to any of the alleged governmental interests. Further, after concluding that neither the law nor the record can sustain any of the interests suggested, the Court, having tried on its own, cannot conceive of any additional interests that DOMA might further." "Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves." Conclusion: DOMA, as it relates to Golinski's case, "violates her right to equal protection of the law under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution" (Golinski.)
"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies." ( American Anthropological Association)
Let me clue you in on something, if it were not for the fact of children and it being in the interest of the State to protect such, since they are the future and the guarantee of the human race, there would be no reason for the government to get involved in any marriage at all. If a man and a woman want to live together, have at it. A man and a man, a woman and a woman...again, have at it. As for marriage equality, that's your term. There exists no such idea in my mind. You do whatever you want in that realm and I'll leave you alone but don't expect me to support you and teach my children that what their mother and I have dedicated 40 years of our lives to is no different than two men deciding to shack up together. Just as the word "gay" has been hi-jacked and given a new meaning so you try to do the same thing with the marriage relationship by use of the term "marriage equality." That term has no meaning to me and it surely doesn't mean what you try to imply. So, do whatever you want in your love life, Dan, and I'll leave you alone.
Gill v OPM: "This court can readily dispose of the notion that denying federal recognition to same-sex marriages might encourage responsible procreation, because the government concedes that this objective bears no rational relationship to the operation of DOMA. (cont.) . Moreover, an interest in encouraging responsible procreation plainly cannot provide a rational basis upon which to exclude same-sex marriages from federal recognition because, as Justice Scalia pointed out, the ability to procreate is not now, nor has it ever been, a precondition to marriage in any state in the country. Indeed, "the sterile and the elderly" have never been denied the right to marry by any of the fifty states. And the federal government has never considered denying recognition to marriage based on an ability or inability to procreate. Similarly, Congress' asserted interest in defending and nurturing heterosexual marriage is not "grounded in sufficient factual context for this court to ascertain some relation" between it and the classification DOMA effects.
What remains, therefore, is the possibility that Congress sought to deny recognition to same-sex marriages in order to make heterosexual marriage appear more valuable or desirable. But the extent that this was the goal, Congress has achieved it "only by punishing same-sex couples who exercise their rights under state law." And this the Constitution does not permit. "For if the constitutional conception of 'equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean" that the Constitution will not abide such "a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group." http://docfiles.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/massachusetts/madce/1:2009cv10309/120672/70/0.pdf
“The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected.” Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U.S. 106,
From the clarification by: Matt Skoufalos, 1:03 pm on Wednesday, November 21, 2012: "2. Student meal plans at Stockton are part of college tuition (room and board) at a state (i.e., taxpayer-funded) institution. It's part of the tab (student loans and scholarships) that these kids who raised and are voting on this issue will be paying for the next 10 to 20 years after their graduation. 3. Chick-fil-A and other on-campus vendors are all rolled up in the package that Chartwell's bids to provide at the school, which means that, for the life of that contract, Chartwell's is paying something to Chick-fil-A to franchise out a branded spot on campus." So in addition to profits from those who choose to support them, Chick benefits from those students who choose not to eat there as well.
"President Obama was the first sitting president to come out in favor of marriage equality, and it didn't cost him at the polls. For the first time ever, a ballot measure against same-sex marriage (in Minnesota) was defeated. And for the first time ever, voters said yes to marriage-equality measures in Maine, Maryland and Washington state. The rights of a minority should never be put to a popular vote. Yet when the results favor equality, you can't help but breathe a sigh of relief." /07/b3ae62ea-2925-11e2-b4e0-346287b7e56c_blog.html "It is clear that marriage-equality opponents are fighting a losing battle and our movement for full equality is at a tipping point,” said Sharon Lettman-Hicks, the executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. “More and more Americans are realizing that LGBT people deserve the same protections to care for the people they love.” Clearly, the concept of marriage equality as well as the term are widely used and understood by others.
"Moreover, an interest in encouraging responsible procreation plainly cannot provide a rational basis upon which to exclude same-sex marriages from federal recognition because, as Justice Scalia pointed out, the ability to procreate is not now, nor has it ever been, a precondition to marriage in any state in the country. Indeed, "the sterile and the elderly" have never been denied the right to marry by any of the fifty states. And the federal government has never considered denying recognition to marriage based on an ability or inability to procreate." (Gill) Clearly, the procreation argument is not a valid excuse to deny equal treatment under the law to gay couples.
It should be clear no two marriages are the same. The 48 hour marriage of Brittany Spears or the 8 marriages of Larry King, are not of equal quality to the 55 year relationship of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the first same sex couple married in California. Spousal abuse and child abuse including murder demonstrate opposite sex marriage is no guarantee of a good marriage or of good parenting. Your denial of marriage equality as a concept or fact of law denies the reality of human relationships. Some are great, some are not. But legal denial of equality does nothing but harms those denied, while legal equality harms no one.
The Supreme Court ruled on the matter of "separate but equal" in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education. The court recognized that "separate but equal" opportunities created a feeling of inferiority for the minorities being segregated, and that this feeling of segregation could cause permanent emotional injury. It was the feeling of segregation and therefore inferiority that caused the court to determine separate could not be equal. "The statutory provisions that continue to limit access to this designation exclusively to opposite sex couples likely will be viewed as an official statement that the family relationship of same sex couples are not of comparable stature or equal dignity to the family relationship of opposite-sex couples." (p.118 In Re Marriage) This official support of prejudice perpetuates it and promotes it as well. I have shown some of the many ways this prejudice causes needless stress, suffering, physical attacks, and death. But thousands of years of history, literature, as well as reason and logic, should all tell you what social science has clearly shown since the beginning: prejudice and discrimination cause needless suffering and death.
"If we have learned anything from the significant evolution in the prevailing societal views and official policies toward members of minority races and toward women over the past half-century, it is that even the most familiar and generally accepted of social practices and traditions often mask unfairness and inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated by those not directly harmed by those practices or traditions." "Conventional understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional protection. Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice." "To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others." (In re marriage)
I'm sure you have much more to say on the subject but my involvement has been exhausted so I'm moving on.
I demonstrated why the procreation argument doesn't hold up to examination. Gay people can and do have children, just as many straight couples do, using all of the wide variety of methods available to those who need assistance. Further gay couples getting married and raising children has no effect on procreation among straight folks. I documented the science, history, and law that demonstrate this fact.
I have had online discussions which included those who clearly stated they wanted gay people to be rounded up and killed. I am glad your prejudice does not include the desire to harm others. Yet the inescapable fact is that no matter what your motivation, the results remain the same: anti-gay laws and social systems that deny equality, perpetuate prejudice and discrimination that causes harm in a wide variety of ways. The resulting dehumanization and demonization is used to justify their behavior by those who bully, beat, torture, and kill, here and around the world. It also results in self destruction, both fast and slow. No matter what the motivation, prejudice and discrimination inevitably cause needless suffering and death.
Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health: "We know for certain that lesbian and gay individuals suffer harm to their physical and psychological health, and to their relationships and quality of life, as result of the shame, isolation and stigma accrued from their social and legal disenfranchisement." The American Psychological Association : "Prejudice and discrimination have social and personal impact." "The widespread prejudice, discrimination, and violence to which lesbians and gay men are often subjected are significant mental health concerns. Sexual prejudice, sexual orientation discrimination, and anti-gay violence are major sources of stress for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people."
Following what Dan said, this is not about accepting others' views. This is about money being put into laws and organizations that are wanting to suppress the rights of fellow citizens.This is not about how Chik-Fil-A is run by people who are against gay marriage, this is not a war of just morals. This is about allowing a company's profits to be consciously used to keep a group of our own fellow Americans from having same rights that we do. What Chik-Fil-A says with their mouths is not important, so much as where they put their money. The actions speak far more than any words.