• Chik-Fil-A owns Berry College, and it's students apparently.

Chik-Fil-A owns Berry College, and it’s students apparently.

Chik-Fil-A exec Dan Cathy has taken a stance on gay marriage.

and Chik-Fil-A is officially against it.

everyone is wondering why the restaurant chain would risk offending such a huge percentage of possible customers, but the reality is this:

the Cathy family has close ties to Berry College, the private liberal arts college I currently attend.

Berry College currently lacks any official LGBT organization, even though the unofficial organization named LISTEN has been trying (to no avail) to reach officiated status since 2003.

either the board of trustees have voted it down, the president of the college at the time has vetoed it, or a larger figure in the background that is bankrolling a large portion of the student body has crushed it. all 3 of these situations are definite reasons as to why Berry College has yet to have an official LGBT group - time and time again.

more recently - the spring semester of 2012 - there has been an outpour of support from professors and staff members who vocally questioned the lack of an official LGBT organization on campus in several campus wide emails. this dialogue was spurred by a recent homophobic hate crime that happened to a student on campus in the ‘safety’ of their own dorm room.

after the crime was committed, an investigation was launched and it shook the campus community to the core.

and here’s where Dan Cathy’s recent statement gets sticky.

Chik-Fil-A is the large figure in the background of Berry College, pulling strings where ever they can so that the campus community is some controlled bubble that operates in a way that pleases the Cathy family.

when the partnership between Chik-Fil-A and Berry College began in 1984, CFA created the Winshape program as well. this program served as a separate campus that had strict rules and their own set of scholarships that was exclusive to straight christians and are not allowed to have sex before marriage, drink, etc unless they lose their scholarship.

this is all well and good. while Berry College is unaffiliated officially, the Winshape program within Berry College is affiliated with the Baptist church through CFA.

there is nothing inherently wrong with the Winshape foundation, or the fact that Berry College has close relations with CFA as a result of the Winshape foundation.

but it seems that not only does Chik-Fil-A own Winshape, but it’s beginning to look like it owns Berry College.

i am personally hurt by the fact that Chik-Fil-A is one of the major reasons why myself and fellow LGBT students of Berry College have to live in fear of another homophobic crime, or that we cannot gather in an official manner on campus, or that we cannot receive funding to hold campus events like other campus groups.

whenever i applied to Berry College, i was looking forward to entering COLLEGE. an open-minded environment filled with critical thinkers and progressive minds. i was looking forward to finding a group of people that have been through much of the same problems i have been through in the past with all the frightening events that a human being of the LGBT ‘classification’ experiences.

Chik-Fil-A has every right to judge what goes on within Winshape simply because students in the Winshape program SIGNED UP FOR IT WILLINGLY.

i did not sign up to be a Winshaper because I am a homosexual man and I am okay with that.

Now that Chik-Fil-A has come out with their official stance, we can at least say they are being honest with the fact that they do not want equal rights for all human beings based on an outdated religious ruling.

Chik-Fil-A: If love exists, it is from God. Who are you to say what marriage isn’t?