Edinburgh University has apologised and blamed a “system error” for an email mistakenly sent to a large number of students, telling them they were not eligible to graduate as they had not completed their course.
A statement posted on the university’s website said that their system was not breached, and no data was compromised. The statement continued:
“We are still looking into the root cause of this error. Meanwhile we would like to apologise unreservedly for any stress that this error has caused you at what we know is a stressful time.”
Apologies to all who received graduation emails in error. There was no system breach and no data was compromised. https://t.co/lG8K07Np2V
— Edinburgh University (@EdinburghUni) 1 juni 2017
The event caused much consternation among fourth year students at Edinburgh, who are due to graduate in just over a month’s time. Many took to Twitter to voice their panic and anger.
One student, named Claire, wrote that she “literally went home from a night out crying cos I thought it was real”.
Another, named Calum, said that the email was a “pretty big error to make”.
Asked what safeguards were in place to avoid such a situation happening at Stirling, the university told Brig that it was “not aware of any specific issues”.
