Yale Daily News

I am so excited about Lalli's appointment. I have heard nothing but rave reviews of him from other students who have taken his classes. This is the beginning of a new era for JE, and I know it will be a great one.

The first sentence of this article is, without doubt, the most frustrating thing I have read in the YDN. While it is true that Lalli is Yale's first openly-gay master, I hardly think that Lalli's appointment should be approached in such a fashion. I do not think that his appointment was a political move on Yale's part. Lalli deserves to be lauded for his "demigod" status (to quote David Leigh's article) within the Yale music community and his perfection for the role of JE master, rather than have his appointment acknowledged simply because of its political significance. The YDN would do better to appreciate all the implications of his appointment, rather than dealing with it in such a one-sided fashion.

I think this article was approached well from a journalistic point of view. The article is comprehensive, and overwhelmingly stresses the centrality of Lalli's qualifications for the job. That the articled led with what is arguably an historic feature of his appointment, is simply the journalist's way of highlighting what is most newsworthy. To deny this feature of Lalli's appointment would be an artificial downplaying of its importance. I think the author goes to great pains to stress Lalli's qualifications for the position, but in the history of Yale University and civil rights more generally his sexuality is important, if arguably not relevant to his future duties. What is most newsworthy here is is that Lalli's sexuality is not considered controversial by a majority, and that represents a cultural change (compared to previous generations) that is significant enough to highlight.