Patrick Sharp, an 18-year-old incoming freshman at Georgia State University (GSU) and the founder of the school's unofficial student group for celebrating Euro-American culture, has an Internet history of hate speech, the Huffington Post reported.
The "White Student Union" (WSU), is not recognized as an official GSU student club and Sharp told the Atlanta Journal Constitution he would not likely try to pursue that. The white supremacist website Stormfront.org lists Sharp as a "sustaining member."
Sharp has used the aliases "frozenpie77" and "sportline" on forums such as Stormfront to use racially insensitive and derogatory terms for blacks and also to advocate for segregation of public schools.
He also told the Constitution his inspiration to start a WSU on his campus came from Mathew Heimbach, a graduate of Towson University in Maryland, a student who did the same. The Southern Poverty Law Center declared that student union a hate group after Heimbach and two other members spoke out in support of racial segregation at a Conservative Political Action Conference.
"Looking back, being online in the company of racially insensitive individuals has taught me one very important lesson: how to spot them," Sharp told the Huffington Post of his past Internet activity. "My most important goal with the [white student union] is to guard it from hot heads, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and anyone with nefarious intent. The WSU is no place for bigots of any kind. We're about heritage and identity; two things that everyone else is allowed to be proud of - why can't we?"
A 60-year-old Alabama native named Don Black, a former grand wizard in the Klu Klux Klan, started Stormfront.org in 1995. He learned computer skills while serving time in federal prison for sedition and his website's motto is "white pride world wide."
Sharp has also met the editor of white nationalist magazine American Renaissance, Jared Taylor, while attending the publication's annual conference.
"As kids, we've all said stupid things - thank God for the 1st Amendment," Sharp said. "But they're only stupid if we don't learn from them."
Sharp's group has not yet sought to be officially recognized by the school and therefore cannot be funded by GSU. Doug Covey, the school's vice president for student affairs, said he has received multiple complaints, but cannot stop Sharp and the group from exercising free speech.
GSU is on of the nation's most diverse campuses with 38 percent of the student body being white, 35 being black, 12 percent Asian and seven percent Latino.
(The author edited this article to include Mathew Heimbach's status as a graduate).