Yesterday, Cornellians received a somber message from the President, which began like so: This past weekend, we were stunned and outraged to learn that a visitor to Cornell had been stabbed on our campus, and that one of our students has been charged with the crime. The victim of the assault is an African American student visiting Cornell from Union College. He was hospitalized at Arnot Ogden Hospital in Elmira, NY. We are greatly relieved that he is recovering and may be released from the hospital very soon. We extend our heartfelt feelings of concern and support to him and wish him a speedy and complete recovery. Following an initial investigation into the stabbing, which occurred early Saturday morning on West Avenue, Cornell University Police arrested Nathan H. Poffenbarger, a 20 year-old Caucasian male, of 10703 Coppermine Road, Woodsboro, Md. Poffenbarger is a sophomore at Cornell University. On Sunday morning, he was arraigned on assault charges in the second degree, a class "D" felony. The Cornell University Police are working actively and closely with the Ithaca Police Department and the Office of the District Attorney. They are continuing their investigation into the case.Fellow Cornellians,
Rawlings takes pains to point out the races of both the victim and the alleged perpetrator, but he never explains why. Reports in The Sun have pointed to likely racial motivations behind the attack, but Rawlings doesn't even allude to them. Instead, he breaks the cardinal rule of sensitivity: only report the race if there's a justification for it. Lame appeals to sympathy or "diversity" don't cut it, and using the preferred "African American" instead of "black" (or "Caucasian" instead of "white") doesn't hide what he's doing. By trying to dodge the real issue, Rawlings comes off as ignorant of the very lessons taught in Cornell's freshman diversity seminars.
