On Wednesday afternoon, Chancellor Mark Wrighton sent out a campus-wide email. And unlike in previous emails that have largely ignored the issues surrounding this semester’s events in Ferguson in favor of concern for the on-campus safety of students, Wrighton finally took a stance.

“We need to acknowledge that racism exists in the University community, in St. Louis and in our nation, and we must work to eliminate it,” Wrighton said.

While we still feel that this email was long overdue, we applaud Wrighton for acknowledging and speaking out against racial inequality and police discrimination. However, as pleased as we are with the chancellor’s statement, this is only the first step—these are only words. We also need action.

Wrighton calls for the University community to “work together toward a future where ‘Black lives matter’ is more than a slogan and where racial inequality is something to be studied in a history course.” We want to see real steps toward this goal. As the semester draws to a close, we urge the chancellor and other University administrators to work over winter break to back up this statement with concrete actions next semester.

Just because we now have a campus hub for topics related to diversity and inclusion doesn’t mean that we’ve achieved a college free of discrimination. We cannot become complacent with our stepping-stones on the way to larger success; rather, as a community, as Wrighton closes his letter, we “can be a force for positive change. Together, we can do better and be better.”

“No person should ever be targeted by a law enforcement official or anyone else solely because of his or her racial identity. That is true anywhere, including on our own campuses,” Wrighton says. With this point in mind, he should model the positive change people across the United States are calling for by instituting a program to train Washington University Police Department in racial sensitivity and social justice.

Because, as Wrighton notes, the student body is not immune to racism, he should champion a new academic requirement wherein all students take at least one class explicitly introducing them to ideas of social justice, diversity and cultural competence.

In being better, though, we need to think outside our normal courses of action, protocols that have, in part, contributed to the current state of the University and surrounding community. All too often, it seems that the University’s response to controversy is to host a forum, and Ferguson has been no exception.

And while discussions are not without benefit, we need to see more action and events that attract members of the community who might not attend more discussion-based events in order to expand the conversations about social justice and racial equality outside formal settings.

This email and its call for action make up a huge, perhaps even unexpected, step, one that likely would not have been made without the efforts of campus protestors. Let’s push Wrighton to take the next one and remember that student advocacy efforts can have large effects in our University community and the St. Louis community at large.