These administrators were clearly trying to convey to the public an attitude of “don’t worry, we have it all under control.”
Of course they were. It’s like how they give those “in-flight safety” speeches every time you fly on an airplane. They say you can use your seat cushion in the event of a “water landing”, but there has never been a “water landing” of a jumbo jet where anyone survived to worry about drowning. It’s more to keep you from worrying than anything else.
An asteroid hitting Earth is a threat that, most likely, nobody is going to be able to predict, much less do anything about. So the best they can do is pretend like they have a plan, so we won’t worry about something out of our control.