The possibility that racial and homophobic remarks were shouted from the windows of two Pollock Halls dorms last week has prompted alarmed reactions from students and residence life.

"I want to feel safe in my own building. I feel those people [responsible] need to be taken out of our building," Robert Coppola (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said, who lives on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Special Living Option floor in Beaver Hall.

Coppola said the slurs might indicate a "larger problem" of individuals who have not been around people who are different from them.

"The kids who do this are very unexposed ... so they come here and act ignorant," he said.

Penn State University Police Supervisor Dwight Smith said police are investigating two incidents. One of the incidents involved a person shouting racial epithets from the fourth floor of Beaver Hall on Thursday night and a similar incident occurred Wednesday night on the third floor of Porter, Smith said.

"We did receive information from our crime alerts ... we are following up on leads, but there is nothing to report yet," he said.

Residence Life coordinator Kiran Singh said mandatory meetings were held in Beaver and Porter halls for all residents this weekend in response to the alleged incidents.

Beaver Hall resident Cindy Kiernan (sophomore-kinesiology) said she learned about the incidents when she attended the building meetings.

"I think it's sad that people still think like that," she said.

"Beaver is such a diverse building ... I think it makes the situation different and worse," Kiernan added.

Assistant Residence Life Director John Hurst said the meetings told students how to report racial slurs or threats, and requested their help in finding information about the incidents.

"[In any] residence hall, whether or not it has the MLK house, it is alarming," Hurst said. "We take this as extremely serious and will let people know what they can do and what we're doing."

Hurst said Residence life staff in Pollock Halls would be meeting with student leaders for follow-up programs, and would be contacting those who did not attend one of the three meetings.

MLK floor resident Andrew Wheelock (freshman-music and theater) said he thought the message at the mandatory meetings was successfully communicated.

"I think it was effective and it made the situation more real," Wheelock said.

Wheelock added that the university and the police reacted appropriately to the incident.

"I think they're doing as much as they can," he said.

But MLK house resident Adhanom Tadesse (sophomore-marketing) said organizations other than Black Caucus need to speak out against the remarks.

Smith said officers attended the Beaver and Porter Hall meetings during the weekend to solicit information and update students on what is being done.

Denise Hinds-Zaami, diversity advocate with the Multicultural Resource Center, said "not understanding commonality" and ignorance of different groups can be causes of racial intolerance.

"Just because someone is different, you don't have to hate them," Hinds-Zaami said.