New Dining Options Available on Campus

The College of Charleston offers several student dining options for students. Considering all CofC freshman are required to have an on campus meal plan, the variety of places is helpful. Recently The College opened yet another option, a second on-campus Chik-Fil-A. 

While usually many students, most who grew up on Chik-Fil-A, would usually welcome such an addition, the decision sparked debate over the summer. Many students felt that Chik-Fil-A's company support of anti-gay organizations went against the College of Charleston's goal to increase campus diversity. 

Although now open for business, many students tried to stop Chick-Fil-A serving its food at another location. One student even created a petition on "Change.org"--the site that led to the reinvestigation of the Trayvon Martin case this past spring.  

Change.org, which was founded in 2007, gives people the chance to start an online petition. Today, the website is growing faster everyday. According to an online article by UK’s The Guardian the website attracts one million new users and 15,000 new petitions each month.

 An interesting aspect to the site is that, much like as in facebook, users can “like” reasons for why people signed.  Change.org will soon be operating in 20 countries, and currently there are petitions—started in the United States—which reveal international injustices that “creators” witnessed while abroad. Change.org believes that “building momentum for social change globally means empowering citizen activists locally” (Change.org website). 

Change starts small—by exposing a specific local issue, national laws can be created to stop such things from happening again. Change.org goes on to say that “anyone, anywhere—from Chicago to Cape Town—can start their grassroots campaign for change using our organizing platform” (Change.org website). 

The online petition showed just how strongly many students felt about the issue. One student, who wished not to be named, said that the issue was about hate, but rather that the restaurant chains views clashed with the those of the College of Charlestons. 

"The focus should be on how the leader of this company's stance is maligned with that of the College's," he said. "Its easy to get caught up in the emotions of situations like this by saying things like 'they hate.' Isn't it as simple as this core value clashes with ours?" 

Regardless of persistence and strong opinions, the College continued to allow the opening of the new Chick-Fil-A location. The heat and intensity ensued over the issue seems to have subsided and students appear to be enjoying the new location. 

"Its just as busy as the other location", says Deja Johnson, an employee at new location which is located next to the Barry Residence Hall. 

People seem to be adjusting and are going against the mantra of fighting fire with fire.