But that is not where it ended.

Instead, Moneta, a college administrator playing to type, escalated the matter by needlessly injecting it into his institution’s bureaucracy. If you’ve been wondering what Duke’s burgeoning numbers of administrators do all day, here’s a look at a priority two chose: Moneta called Robert Coffey, Duke’s director of dining services, telling him that while at a coffee shop that contracts with the university, he heard an inappropriate song playing.

So the head of dining services called Robbie Roberts, the owner of Joe Van Gogh, who relies on income from Duke University. Now back to the alt-weekly, which somehow got audio of the meeting between the two baristas who were there during the incident and Joe Van Gogh’s human-resources manager:

At that meeting, Amanda Wiley from Joe Van Gogh’s human resources department told them that they could no longer work at Joe Van Gogh. “We had gotten a call from Robert Coffey of Duke saying that the VP of the university had come into the shop and that there was vulgar music playing,” Wiley said. “Joe Van Gogh is contracted by Duke University, so we essentially work for them. And they can shut us down at any point.” Wiley cleared her throat. “Duke University has instructed us to terminate the employees that were working that day.” After a long pause, she offered Brown and Simons severance if they resigned. She said she had the paperwork for termination and resignation with her, so they could choose either option. Then she reassured them that she and other managers would be a positive reference for them for future jobs. Throughout the meeting, Wiley expressed how good employees both Brown and Simmons had been...



“I’m just kind of shocked,” Simmons told Wiley. “I didn’t have any control over the music. I’m having trouble understanding how I’m responsible for this.”



“For [Simmons, a white man] to be fired because of this, it is not fair,” Brown, who had worked at Joe Van Gogh for nearly a year and a half, told Wiley. “I feel like you guys were trying to cover it up as to make it not look discriminatory for firing a person of color.”



“This is coming from the university,” Wiley responded.

Bless Britni Brown: Even while getting needlessly fired on the whim of Duke administrators, despite being a solid employee, she stood up for her co-worker. That moment should impress any prospective employer.

Now, perhaps everything after the call to Coffey, the head of dining services, could have been written off as a terrible misunderstanding, if the Duke administrators had reacted to the alt-weekly story by saying, “No! It wasn’t our intention at all to have the young employees fired! Please rehire them, we just want the college coffee shop to assiduously censor its music going forward!”

Instead, Moneta, who does not believe that Duke should restrict hate speech (citing a persuasive book on the topic), emailed this statement to The Chronicle:

"I expressed my objections to the staff with whom I’ve always had a cordial relationship. I insisted on paying for my purchase and left the store. I then contacted the director of Duke Dining to express my concerns and that was the end of my involvement … To those who feel that I’ve flipped on my positions on free expression, I say this. The artist who wrote, recorded and performed the music is absolutely entitled to do so, however offensive I might find the lyrics." He wrote that how Joe Van Gogh's management chose to respond to the incident was their choice. "The employees who chose to play the song in a business establishment on the Duke campus made a poor decision which was conveyed to the JVG management," Moneta wrote. "How they responded to the employees’ behavior was solely at their discretion."

Marvel with me at the apostrophe implying that he continues to consider the employee who didn’t, in fact, choose the music as an employee whose behavior is relevant.