Four years ago I arrived here at The Pennsylvania State University as a young man from West Philadelphia. With me I brought great hope for myself and my family.

However, this was diluted with some concern.

The hope that I was bringing with me was one of a chance to enter a university of high standards — something that no one in my family had done before. The concern I had was from my family and my closest friends.

They had never been to Centre County, or Penn State, but they were telling me to be careful. These overtones of safety were due to the fact that I am a black man planning to attend Penn State. The overtones they expressed were the following:

To be careful where and when you walk because areas of Penn State and Centre County are not safe for you to walk sometimes.

Racism and hate are still present at Penn State.

I did not really pay much attention to their comments. I saw them as irrelevant comments coming from people who never had any contact with Penn State.

However, based on the experiences that I, as well as some of my friends have had here, I can say that the accusations that my family and friends had four years before were correct.

Penn State and Centre County is a bastion of hate and racism.

The feeling of hate and racism has heightened for me because of the racist letters and threats some students recently received. The recipients included Black Caucus President LaKeisha Wolf. Although these recent letters are probably from the fears of a coward who refuses to show his or her face, this behavior is still unacceptable.

Penn State and Centre County will always remain a bastion of racism and hate because of the conservative values, and how some people in this region fear the achievements of blacks and other minority groups.

As president of the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the governing greek organization of the historically black greek lettered organizations, we support Penn State University and its efforts to find the person or persons responsible for this heinous act of hate.

This individual should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I also challenge the university and the Centre County community to come together and alleviate this negative perception of the university and community.

As students, university administrators and community leaders, we need to form a joint commitment to end hate and racism in this area. We can no longer sit idly by and believe that the situation of hate and racism does not exist at Penn State University.

It does exist and we have to make moves to stop it. If we do not, it will it only get worse.