Penn State University Police are still looking for leads about who might be responsible for several graffiti incidents and a costly fire at the new School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) building early Sunday morning.

The word "tang" was spray painted in orange on several buildings throughout campus; however, Penn State Police Supervisor Dwight Smith said police do not know the meaning of the word.

The fire has been ruled arson. The suspect(s) will face possible arson charges, which are felony offenses.

"We do know that the fire was intentionally started," Smith said.

Smith said he could not specify the location of the fire, because it could compromise the investigation.

"If anyone's seen anything at all suspicious, we're asking them to call the police," Smith said. "And, also, if after the fact, people saw anyone bleeding or people carrying any paint."

University Police are looking into whether the blood found on a doorway in the SALA building may have come from a suspect when he was in the building. However, that connection has not been proven yet.

"Certainly, if DNA is available in the blood, we'll definitely be doing work with it," Smith said.

Penn State spokesman Tysen Kendig said university police have not verified a connection between the fire and graffiti.

"There has been some thought that these cases were connected," Kendig said. "But nothing has been proven yet."

Smith said the damage from the fire and the graffiti was about $100,000 but the final cost of the damage will not be determined until the replacement and cleanup costs are established.

Kendig and Smith both said they have not seen a graffiti incident of this magnitude during their tenures at Penn State.

"There have been smaller, isolated incidents," Kendig said. "And these have included chalk on sidewalks or paint on buildings, but nothing to this scope."

Kendig said Office of Physical Plant (OPP) cleanup crews have been good at quickly locating the locations of the graffiti and effectively removing it.

OPP spokesman Paul Ruskin said most of the graffiti has been removed.

"Normally, we'd remove graffiti as quickly as possible, but in this case it's a little different," Ruskin said. "We're giving the police sufficient time to do their analysis."

Ruskin said OPP's yearly expenditure on repairing vandalism, including graffiti, at University Park is $10,000.

"It does sound bizarre and strange that someone would go through these lengths to do this at all of these locations," Kendig said. "It's very unusual."

The buildings that had graffiti on them included Old Main, Willard Building, the Pattee and Paterno Libraries, the Forum Building, North Halls and the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center.

"[Police] are working on finding any witnesses who may have seen the suspects carrying spray paint cans around campus at 4 or 5 in the morning," Penn State spokesman, Bill Mahon said.

Kendig said that as far as he knows the graffiti was limited to buildings on campus and nothing off-campus.

Smith said witnesses should visit the University Police Silent Witness Web site at http://www.psu.edu/dept/police/SilentWitness.htm if they have any information on the case or call police at 863-1111.