For someone probably familiar with the cultural history of his workplace Larry Moneta should probably reflect even on those same issues that makes John Kelly so thick-headed about immigrant cultures.
The personal can be political, but not all the time, but Larry seems not to have learned anything in grad school at UMass or even working at UPenn.
Then again Larry’s in charge of things related to student affairs at Duke, so perhaps he felt that a campus coffee shop should not have the kind of discourse that made Duke lose its men’s lacrosse team for a while.
Then again even Stephen Miller and Richard Spencer went there. But in this instance, no one got punched in the head, arrested, or even tried to outrun a girl’s track team.
Firing baristas sends a message, but to whom? You’d think there could even be teachable moments at one of the nation’s leading universities. But it is more about small-minded power-trips.
This minor micro-aggressive event does seem even stupider in context, once one looks at the music video for the music that made Larry into such a snowflake.
But perhaps Larry is too stupid to fill out a customer comment card rather than swinging his… status around, which is sort of the point of the song.
According to Indy Week, Britni Brown—who is black—and Kevin Simmons—who is white—weren’t doing anything that baristas at Joe Van Gogh don’t normally do: They were playing music from a Spotify playlist in the shop.
When Larry Moneta—vice president for student affairs at Duke—came in for his regular hot tea and vegan muffin, the song “Get Paid” by Young Dolph was playing. In the song, Young Dolph repeatedly says, “Get paid, young nigga.”
When it was his turn at the register, Moneta—who is white—told Brown that the song was inappropriate. Brown told Indy Week that she apologized and immediately turned the song off. She offered him the vegan muffin for free, but Moneta insisted on paying for it.
[...]
Amanda Wiley, a human resources representative for Joe Van Gogh, told the pair that they could no longer work for the company.
[...]
During the conversation, Wiley said: “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. Joe Van Gogh is contracted by Duke University, so we essentially work for them. And they can shut us down at any point.”
Wiley then cleared her throat and said, “Duke University has instructed us to terminate the employees that were working that day.”
www.theroot.com/...
The owner of Joe Van Gogh Coffee is closing his shop on the Duke University campus, he said Friday, to preserve the company’s “brand independence without conditions.”
Company owner Robbie Roberts said in a statement on the Joe Van Gogh website that the decision would be effective immediately and that all employees of the Duke shop would be offered jobs at other stores or in the production offices.
[...]
The incident has renewed a number of simmering concerns:
- about Moneta, who already was being criticized for insensitivity in his wording of an April email to students encouraging them to participate in a survey about campus sexual assault and harassment;
- about the way contract employees are treated at Duke, where they lack some of the workplace protections that full-time university employees enjoy;
- about race relations at Duke, whose student body is less than 10 percent African American.
The Chronicle said the issue made it to Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” Thursday night. As part of a segment he called “Tolerance Tips,” the comedian said, “Hold on. If we’re allowed to complain about the music at coffee shops, I would like a warrant signed out for Michael Buble’s arrest.”
www.newsobserver.com/...
LM: I'm a child of the 60s. I started college just a few months after Martin Luther King's assassination and just before Robert Kennedy's assassination. My whole upbringing is one that is empowered by being an activist. Both of my parents were Holocaust survivors. I come from an environment in which oppression defined my family's experience, in which activism also defined my youth and my college experience. I'm a strong proponent of student activism. Regardless of the perspective or position, I would always prefer an environment in which students are being very active in expressing their thoughts and trying to convey messages. First and foremost, what I want students to do is vote. I hope in general, our students will be an active group and try to advance our nation and our world. So many of the most important movements in America—women's rights, gay rights, the presence of black students on our campus, Latinx students—all of that, I believe, were derived of activism of people before us. So much of that took place because of the experiences on college campuses in America. I still believe college campuses are very the place in which important movements are birthed and nurtured. I'd like to see our students be a strong part of that.
www.dukechronicle.com/...