CHICAGO -- Northwestern University campus police are patrolling the hallways of one of the school's dorms this week following the scrawling of racist graffiti in the residence hall overnight Monday.

This is not the first time a hate crime has happened on the Evanston campus. At least four similar occurrences were reported at Northwestern in February and March.

FeedRoom

Northwestern Dorm Hate Crime

NBC5's Anita Padilla reported that the FBI is now getting involved in the investigation. Late Thursday afternoon, university officials said the bureau offered to help determine just who is behind the alleged hate crimes. Officials say they gladly accepted the offer and now hope to get to the bottom of the problem.

Padilla said that while the campus itself is beautiful, what Northwestern University police found inside Ayers Hall, 2324 Campus Drive, can only be described as "ugliness in its purest form."

On Tuesday morning, students woke up to find crude messages of hate written on some dorm room doors. They were, reportedly, directed at three black students.

The vandals targeted two separate dorm rooms and, using a black marker, wrote racial slurs and drew a picture of what appears to be a lynching, according to campus officials.

"It's very difficult to catch someone," said Al Cubbage, Northwestern University spokesperson. Especially "if it is a student, which it appears to be. Again, there were no signs of forced entry."

Investigators believe the offender is a university student because the residence halls are only accessible using keys given to hall residents, Cubbage said.

The recent offense sent shock waves across the campus of the university, where Cubbage said these things "just don't happen."

"We have some of the best students in the world and this is abhorrent ... and it's painful for the victims" he said.

As a result, campus police are not only patrolling the areas around the hall more during early morning hours, but they are walking the halls at night.

The incident had students asking administrators for video cameras in the hallways of residence halls, a move Cubbage said officials were hesitant to make.

"Students here want to feel safe and secure, there's no doubt about that, but some of the students I've talked to said the idea of cameras in their dorms (at all times) would be pretty intrusive," Cubbage said.

Everne Saxton, an assistant director with the school's African American Student Affairs office, declined to comment on the incident.