At first, no one was willing to venture an estimate of lives lost.
But as weeks slipped by and information trickled in, University officials have been able to get a better sense of the losses within the Penn community.
Thus far, 12 Penn alumni have been confirmed either dead or missing as a result of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the Department of Development and Alumni Relations.
Nearly 40,000 Penn graduates live in the greater New York area, and about 280 listed the World Trade Center as either their primary or secondary mailing address, according to the University Alumni Society.
"There are still people who have not been identified one way or the other, so it certainly could change," said Bob Alig, assistant vice president for alumni relations.
The 12 deaths already confirmed, however, only draw from those reported to Alumni Relations and private company Web sites, leaving open the possibility that others still may be unreported.
Much of the information on alumni has come through electronic forms of communication, such as Web sites of companies that had offices in the World Trade Center, e-mails exchanged in the aftermath and posts made to a message board to which the Penn Alumni site links.
More than one hundred posts have been added to the message board since it was created after the attacks. Though the majority of the posts tell of alumni safe and sound, a few names have been posted as missing or dead.
Among those reported missing or killed on the message board are Garth Feeney, a 1995 Engineering and Wharton alumnus, Mark L. Charette, a 1985 Wharton alumnus, and Mukul Agarwala, a 1989 Wharton Graduate alumnus.
"Some people have called in, the calls have slowed down in recent days," Alig said. He added that using electronic forms of communication has been both easier for families to deal with and allows 24-hour access to international alumni, anxious to find out about friends.
"The response from people has been very, very supportive of what we've done," Alig said.
In memory of those killed in the attacks, there will be a moment of silence observed at the start of the Homecoming game on Nov. 3.
As a further form of outreach, Penn alumni in the New York area have been invited to attend a symposium on terrorism in New York on Oct. 29. The same symposium was presented at Penn last month. University President Judith Rodin and several professors will present at the lecture, which will address topics such as how future attacks might be avoided and reactions to the attack.
"It's a way of reaching out and helping people to come to grips with the tragedy from an intellectual perspective," Alig said.
