COLUMBUS, Ohio More than 350 letters that university officials call racist were sent to seven dorms on the Ohio State campus.

The essay style writing of the letter, titled "On Average, Blacks Are Less Intelligent Than Whites," has students talking.

Both Patrick Richardson and Aaron Hatchett said they received the letter.

"It was just kind of a hurtful thing," Hatchett said. "I wasn't upset really, but I thought that the world was getting beyond this, but still he would take an academic approach to writing this paper."

The author of the letter cities books such as "The Unfinished Presidency" and magazines including "Washington Monthly" to make his case.

"I was a little bit upset and appalled by it showing people that today they still have these beliefs about African Americans," Richardson said.

Hatchett said the most troubling part of the letter was a reference to keeping abortion legal in order to keep the black birth rate down.

"To think that we need to be extinct from the world is just its preposterous," Hatchett said.

The University responded to the letter with a massive email to students, faculty, and staff that said, "This is a message that is both intellectually invalid and morally corrupt."

It's a message Richardson and Hatchett said they hope one day won't have to be talked about, but say until then they will keep talking about tolerance and understanding.

"Of course we don't live in a utopia world," Richardson said. "I mean, we still have groups like the KKK today and you're going to have people with their thoughts and feelings, but we just need to get more people to unite, to get together to get along."

The author put his name and address on the letter, saying anyone who wanted to know more could write him and send $2. The university advised that no one respond.

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Reported by Laura Cole