The Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading an inquiry into the incidents. The fear has taken its toll. Gabriel Bryant, a senior and a member of the Black Caucus, had not slept in his apartment in five days when he went home on a Monday afternoon to get clothes and deodorant. He, Ms. Wolf, and other black students who have previously received threats, were living behind the locked doors of the heavily guarded Paul Robeson Cultural Center inside the student-union building. People here, holed up and seeking refuge, do not view these threats as isolated incidents.
Nerves are likely to continue fraying until the summer.
In response, university administrators say they will step up security at commencement. The makeshift protest drew the support of many faculty members, some of whom dropped by on a Sunday morning to make pancakes for the students. Many professors allowed the students to adjust their exam schedules, according to several protesters. The vast majority of students at Penn State, however, had little or nothing to do with the protest. And the opinions of minority students in the building did not necessarily match those of all minority students at Penn State.