Before the whole Chick-fil-A gay-marriage thing, there were other campus vendors with political ties that offended some students. But Inside Higher Ed says what distinguishes the Chick-fil-A movement from those past incidents is how rapidly it spread in a short period of time. And the movement is playing out differently on-campus than off.
But it’s not a coincidence that the Chick-fil-A issue is drawing a larger – or at least more vocal – range of students (anti-Chick-fil-A petitions have surfaced at more than a dozen campuses, from California to Kansas to Georgia). As political debates go, one would be hard-pressed to find an issue these days on which more college students – on the left or the right – are coming to agree on. (An annual survey of incoming freshmen this year found that 71.3 percent either believe “strongly” or “somewhat” that gay couples should be allowed to marry, up 6.4 percentage points from two years ago.)
“They’re in general not likely to get a huge backlash from their fellow students, and in fact are likely to get a lot of support,” said Angus Johnston, a student activism historian and adjunct assistant history professor at the City University of New York’s Hostos Community College. (It’s also worth noting that while many local-level campus protests regarding any given issue may be playing out on various campuses at any given time, they gain momentum when the story emerges at the national level.)
Read more at: www.insidehighered.com
