Lino Pertile is the Godfather

Eliot House Master and Romance Language prof Lino Pertile probably prefers Renaissance French literature to organized crime, and there have been no reports of bloody horse heads in the bedsheets of Eliot residents—but Pertile is, in fact, Italian. The natural corollary, then, seems to be that the Don of Eliot can be compared to a mafioso and potentially emblazoned as such on the House t-shirt.

But one Eliot resident took issue with the t-shirt design depicting Pertile as Vito Corleone, complete with the caption "The Housemaster." The Godfather, the resident wrote on the house list, portrays a "rather romanticized notion of mob violence that has helped propagate the stereotype associating Italians with violent crime." In other words, the mafia likes to kill people, and Pertile is certainly not the man for the job (he'd rather take a stab at Dante's Inferno, thank you very much, after the jump):

Now, these comparisons are a bit weak, and considering the myriad of nonsensical house t-shirts that have made their way onto the bosoms of many Harvard students, we don't think the tenuous relationship between Pertile and Corleone is a cause for concern. The real issue seems to be, is a comparison to Corleone necessarily a bad thing? Also, the t-shirt's a joke, if you didn't notice (via the Eliot list):

Anyways, Pertile himself supposedly cleared the Godfather shirt ahead of time—and he "loved" it. Just make sure he doesn't venture unaccompanied through any tollbooths or cornfields until housing day is over.