[Update: Perhaps coincidentally, the local franchisee for Chick-Fil-A sent an email to members of local media less than 30 minutes after we posted this story inviting us to dine for free at any of the three locations in Lafayette.]
A petition drive is afoot that seeks to boot from the UL Lafayette campus Chick-Fil-A, a fast food chain owned by fundamentalist Christians — Chick-Fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays — whose foundation, WinShape, donates heavily to rightwing, anti-gay/lesbian groups like Focus on the Family and Exodus International, a “pray away the gay” group.
According to the petition posted at SignOn.org:
I support the cause of removing Chick-fil-A from UL Lafayette due to their anti-LGBT and anti-Civil Rights record.The move to push Chick-Fil-A off the Lafayette campus is not a new phenomenon. LGBT student groups and their supporters have waged similar campaigns at college campuses across the country. Earlier this year following a 31-5 vote against Chick-Fil-A by its Student Senate, Northeastern University in Boston scrapped plans to allow a franchise on its campus.
Chick-fil-A currently serves thousands of students a year at UL Lafayette. However, the company has consistently funded groups that fight against LGBT Equality. Chick-fil-A has donated over $5 million dollars to anti-gay organizations between 2003 - 2010.
As a campus that supports diversity and inclusion, UL Lafayette, its faculty, staff, and students should not be funding a company that supports anti-equality measures. Removing this restaurant from campus will send a strong message that UL Lafayette stands up for the rights of all their students, faculty, and staff.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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