On Wednesday, a freshman student at Florida Atlantic University found himself kicked out of his school and given a trespass warning after talking about a possible gun-attack threat online—in spite of campus police choosing not to press charges over what he'd posted on anonymous messaging app Yik Yak.

18-year-old student Emeil Stewart had used Yik Yak the night before to post a vaguely worded warning: "my friend just said he shooting up the breezeway [an FAU commons] and texted me a pic of a gun idk if he jokin." The following day, at a campus police press conference, school officials explained that they'd received reports from concerned students about the post, and shortly afterward, the student deleted his post and turned himself into school police.

"This was not a serious threat and an 18-year-old mistake," FAU police chief Charles Lowe said at the press conference, confirming that no weapons were found in Stewart's on-campus quarters. Officials also confirmed that the suspension was meant to "send a message" that "no threats or hoaxes will be tolerated."

Though Yik Yak allows users to post anonymously by default, the company behind the app has complied with police requests for user information on multiple occasions. Most of those have revolved around threats and harassing posts that have circulated at high school and college campuses, where the app has enjoyed popularity due to its "anonymous with GPS" functionality—meaning, users at a school can post on Yik Yak to ensure that people within that immediate vicinity, and nobody else, sees the posts in question—essentially, like a virtual bulletin board in the school cafeteria.

"It's difficult for law enforcement to keep up with all of the social media," Lowe told reporters. "Students are much more adept at that than we are."

Stewart identified himself to both Boca Raton's NBC affiliate and FAU student publication University Press in explaining his side of the story—that he thought he'd overheard a threat and grabbed his phone to spread the word—and confirmed that he had lied about receiving a texted picture of a gun. "I didn't make a threat," Stewart told the University Press. "If I did, they would have arrested me on the spot."