As of Friday, Greensboro police had filed charges against five football players, primarily for assault and ethnic intimidation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had begun an investigation to determine whether the attack was a hate crime.  Since the attack, several students, including members of minorities, have worn T-shirts saying, “I don’t feel safe here,” and, “Hate crimes happen at Guilford College.”  And one victim, along with Guilford’s director of multicultural education, Sekinah Hamlin, has called the incident a hate crime. Students and faculty and staff members have come together in customary Quaker fashion — for a worship service at the New Garden Friends Meeting House near the site of an Underground Railroad station across from the campus, for discussions where all were encouraged to speak and for a daytime vigil. A loose confederation of activist students organized a walkout from classes on Thursday in solidarity with the crime victims.  While some students praise Ms. Hamlin as trying to create a safe atmosphere for minority students to voice their concerns after the beatings, others, including friends of several athletes on campus, accuse her and some students of fostering a divisive, fearful atmosphere.  “It’s just driving a wedge between us,” said Emily Bradford, 20, a third-year anthropology, sociology and forensic science major from Hillsborough. “That’s not what Guilford is all about. That’s not what community is all about.”  Even the most ardent activists say the incident has led to a lot of stereotyping and name-calling.  “I have a friend who’s a footballer,” said Casey Thomas, 18, a freshman from Queens. “He wasn’t even here that weekend, but he said someone came up and just cursed him out — lectured him.”  In spite of the divisions, students across campus sounded remarkably similar themes on Friday, whether at a tiny liberal hangout called the Greenleaf Cafe, a dorm-basement co-op or at the sprawling dining room in Founders Hall. All expressed the desire for everyone to stop stereotyping the attack or anyone involved in it and for people not to rush to judgment but instead have the patience to let the investigative process work itself out.  “Getting to the truth is going to be a process,” said Lili Sharpless, 21, a third-year student from Germantown, Pa. “You have to trust that. A lot of people feel the football players should be suspended without going through the process.”  Ms. Thomas expressed a similar idea, lamenting divisions among students that she thinks are superficial and wrongheaded.  “This is not a clique war,” she said. “This is not a hippie vs. athlete thing.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Hate Crime’ Of Beatings Divides A Campus. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The beatings of three Palestinian students on the campus of Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., have created divisions in the school.