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GREENSBORO — Nearly 400 people gathered on the lawn of a Guilford College residence hall Wednesday night, holding white candles and proclaiming hatred had no place on campus.

“The whole purpose of this vigil was to show that among Guilford’s seven core values, hatred is not one of them,” said Brian Daniel, a junior elementary education major.

Daniel, president of the school’s gay and lesbian organization, Guilford PRIDE, hosted the vigil with the student-run Guilford Peace Society just a week after a student found anti-gay letters on his door in Bryan Hall.

College President Kent Chabotar said the school has since held open discussions about the incident and used it as a learning opportunity.

He said the incident violates the campus conduct code, and the school is trying to find the author of the two letters.

“Until we find them and until they are proven guilty, we have due process here,” he said.

“If we didn’t, we’d be doing the same stuff as the person who did this was trying to do — taking away people’s rights.”

The several hundred people circled outside Bryan Hall included faculty, UNCG students and community members.

They first lined the corner of Friendly Avenue and New Garden Road, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with candles and rainbow-themed signs. Then, they marched down Eli Coffin Drive, passed Founders Hall and moved onto the lawn.

Mary Washburn, a sophomore studying comparative religion and Spanish, said it’s important for people from different backgrounds to support the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

“I think we need to make a response to a hate crime,” Washburn said. “It’s not just for a person, the one person that was threatened, it’s for the entire homosexual community here and everyone who knows about the event.”

Daniel said Guilford PRIDE’s mission is to bring about more awareness. The organization will hold discussions and write letters to Congress because the anti-gay remarks given to the student were not deemed a hate crime by state law.

In North Carolina, the hate crime statute allows judges to increase the penalties for verbal racial attacks during the commission of a crime, assault, murder and vandalism, if it is determined the crime was motivated by racial, religious, or sexual orientation bias.

Daniel was pleased with the overall turnout from the greater Greensboro community. He said it is a positive response for “a horrific incident” experience by one student, who remains anonymous.

“Whoever he is, I hope that he knows that he is loved, that he is respected on our campus.”

Contact Dioni L. Wise at 373-7090 or dioni.wise@news-record.com