System error tells hundreds of Edi fourth years that they won’t be graduating

Over night, whole departments of Edinburgh fourth years who are expecting to graduate this summer received an alarming email from the university suggesting that they will not be able to graduate.

Many finalists were on nights out celebrating finishing exams when they were sent an email saying their application for the graduation ceremony had been denied because they weren't going to complete their studies.

A fourth year Japanese student, Gabriel told the Tab about his initial reaction to the email. He said: "I thought from the email title they were going to announce that McEwan Hall wasn’t finished and that they were going to change the location of the ceremony but when I actually read the email my jaw just dropped and I just started to panic.

"I immediately tried calling the number in the email to see what was going on but the line was busy so I sent a terrified email to my personal tutor. I then checked Facebook and about 3 or 4 group chats all lit up with everyone saying that they got the same email and were equally freaked out got sent an email from a student administration officer suggesting he could not graduate in this upcoming June graduation."

Thankfully though, the email appears to be spam. Students were sent a follow up email this morning saying that the earlier email was spam and that graduation was going ahead as expected.

Despite the follow-up email claiming that the original was spam, it appears that changes were made to people's EUCLID accounts too with a big red warning coming up saying that they would not be graduating this summer.

A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “Our preliminary investigation suggests that these emails were regrettably issued as a result of a system error. There was no breach of our systems and no student data was compromised. The University has written to all students affected to reassure them that their graduations have not been cancelled and asking them to ignore the emails.”