There was a palpable uncertainty in the air that day. Was the chat to be taken as a serious threat to the well-being of Penn’s black freshmen and in turn, Penn’s black community? Or was it a joke that got too serious to take back? The motive is still unclear, but the incident certainly made students fearful.

The university was clear in its condemnation of hate and hate speech on Penn’s campus, but the official response came after news had spread to local law enforcement and the media, and after students of color had already met to debrief and discuss the situation.

That problem is not exclusive to the University of Pennsylvania: Many schools are unable to keep up with how quickly the world moves in this digital era.

Don’t get me wrong: Some of the key supporters of black student groups were faculty members who were instrumental in making sure that everyone felt safe and supported and that proper resources were being applied to figuring out who was responsible for the chat’s existence. I just wish that the university had taken steps publicly to support its black students much sooner than it did.

Maybe it sounds unreasonable to expect a college administration to keep up with the speed of internet discourse. But when several campus groups organized walkouts, demonstrations, rallies and marches to signal solidarity with black students, it took the Penn administration several days to publicly join and support the actions.

Black and brown students need more than official statements of concern to feel safe and welcome in college. The GroupMe incident provides a pretty good example of how amorphous online threats can still be powerfully targeted at us in terrifyingly specific ways.

The racist chat appeared to have been created in Oklahoma, but for the creator to have known so many members of the black freshman class, he or she would have to have been at Penn. So black students immediately assumed it was coming from somewhere on campus. There were multiple individuals who were taunting students on this chat, and all were anonymized by pseudonyms. So the big questions were: How many people were involved? Would they act on their covert threats? How much of the population of the school did they speak for? The chats also included a racial taunt that invoked the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon, some chapters of which have been shut down at other campuses for racist behavior. (The Penn S.A.E. chapter immediately denounced the online attacks.)