Exactly one year ago, one of the busiest parts of the University of Texas erupted into chaos and bloodshed after a student attacked people with a knife, seemingly at random.

The campus was plunged into a state of fear and confusion as students and faculty members alike sought to understand what exactly had occurred.

UT Police Chief David Carter on Monday reflected on his department’s response to the stabbings, which killed 19-year-old Harrison Brown and sent three others to the hospital. At first, police believed they had done everything right.

Officers were at the scene at 21st Street and Speedway within 90 seconds. Minutes after the initial attack, a UT officer captured the suspect, Kendrex White, who was 21 at the time.

But even though the rapidly unfolding event had ended quickly, misinformation on social media began to fly unmitigated. A second unfounded report of a stabbing in the student-heavy neighborhood west of campus led many to fear that the incident on campus was just part of a larger attack.

“Years ago, it would have been satisfactory for a police department to kind of give an update in 15 or 20 minutes,” Carter said. “Those days are long gone with social media. The information and misinformation started flying right and left, and that certainly was problematic. We want to get in front of that. That is our single biggest lesson.”

To that end, Carter said the university in the past year has created a more robust communications operation related to public safety. UT police now have their own dedicated communications specialist, former Fox 7 reporter Noelle Newton.

UT government freshman Andrew Harmon said he has seen UT and Austin police increase their efforts in the past several months to reach out to the campus community. He sees students becoming more comfortable with reporting suspicious behavior.

“Honestly, students all the time see things going on,” especially on the stretch of campus along Guadalupe Street, known as the Drag, Harmon said. “A lot of that goes unreported because of a lack of knowledge about the relationship police and students should have.”

Carter said the outreach has paid dividends, as he now believes students are more likely to report suspicious incidents that they might not have called in before.

Joell Sullivan-McNew, the head of the parent organization SafeHorns, which was formed after the 2016 killing of freshman dance student Haruka Weiser, echoed praise for the UT Police Department’s increased outreach. However, Sullivan-McNew said she is still waiting to see the full implementation of recommendations from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s audit of UT campus safety made in the wake of Weiser’s slaying.

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Recommendations include hiring more police officers, increasing the number of surveillance cameras on campus, adding more lighting and removing shrubbery in some areas.

The UT system has spent about $5 million on related safety improvements. That has led to a 55 percent increase in the number of campus police officers, from 67 to 104.

Many of those improvements are ongoing. But UT’s civilian head of campus safety, Jimmy Johnson, said that their No. 1 goal is to make sure no one is ever afraid to come to campus.

“When you come to campus and are afraid, the bad guys win,” Johnson said.