You’ve got mail, and it’s “From David.” Today, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, while your snail mail took the day off, your email inbox got one message closer to the limit. President David Skorton sent out an email to everyone @cornell.edu. It wasn’t so much a letter as it was a statement, which it said in caps on the very top SO NO ONE WOULD MISS IT. In this message, Doc Skorton highlighted many of the ways that Cornell “builds on Dr. King’s legacy” throughout the year, and not just on the third Monday of January, circa the birthday of the civil rights leader.

That is all well and good, but considering the city of Ithaca is in the midst of a flurry of incidents involving race, it’s a bit of an oversight for the President of Cornell to send out a mass statement about Martin Luther King’s legacy without addressing some of the most relevant local issues. We all love soup, but it’s not entirely clear how some cauldron-sized portions of butternut squash bisque are going to solve the issues Dr. King strove to overcome. More than anything, the email was a virtual “To Be Continued” promotion for events during Black History month.

A Cornell freshman might be able to go through an entire year without setting foot off campus, but a large portion of the Cornell community, the city of Ithaca is a place we are all well acquainted with. For many members of the Cornell community — scores of professors, staff members, and grad students — Ithaca is the city in which their kids go to schools that have been mired in racially-charged confrontations. One such skirmish centered around the child of a Cornell graduate student.

Last Saturday, Cornell Liaison to the Ithaca City School District Cal Walker served as the keynote speaker at a Greater Ithaca Activities Center’s annual Martin Luther King Day event, which was themed “Crisis in the Community: Equity in the ICSD.” Considering Mr. Walker considers these incidents amount to a crisis, shouldn’t the University get more involved than just scheduling speaking engagements?

Cornell has taken token steps towards assuaging the problem, such as creating a Chief Diversity Officer position to attend to our on-campus race relations, but there is still much to be done about the off-campus race relations that have directly affected members of the Cornell community. At the very least, mention the real, current and relevant issues in your emails.