UNC, Penn track racist e-mail

The Associated Press The message -- ''Why all blacks should go back to Africa'' -- was posted to at least 10 newsgroups, which are like electronic bulletin boards. Anyone reading the posting would assume it originated at UNC. Although UNC-Chapel Hill officials still don't know who posted the racist message, they say they know who didn't -- former UNC business student David Pyle, who owned the e-mail account associated with the posting. UNC officials have determined that the message originated outside the university but was forged to look like it came from Pyle's e-mail account. The situation could be compared to someone mailing a letter with another person's return address. ''The letter appears to come from David Pyle, but I don't think it did,'' said Paul Mitchell, UNC's e-mail postmaster in an interview with The Herald-Sun of Durham. ''I've ruled him out as a suspect, but he never was a suspect in my mind anyway.'' The Division of Student Affairs and the Office of Information Technology at UNC are still looking for the source of the message. UNC officials began investigating the message as a forgery after they discovered there was no record of the message identification number on the posting. The ID number on the posting initially led UNC officials to believe the message came from Carolina. Officials now suspect the message may have originated at Penn because of documentation Mitchell found while studying logs that identify users who have tried to sign on to UNC's computer system. ''There is no evidence the message came from the University of Pennsylvania, but there is evidence people tried to get onto UNC's system from that university,'' Mitchell said. ''It's worth looking down this avenue.'' University officials began investigating the message last week after an outraged Internet user in California sent a copy of the message to Frederic Schroeder, UNC's dean of students.