Students from three classes at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law got a surprise when they checked their transcripts just before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.

A transcript error caused some grades to be applied to the wrong people.

Nancy Firak, the associate dean of Chase Academics, said the mistake was found between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m. Jan. 18. Students who had turned in their transcripts to the Career Development Office for jobs or internships by the 5 p.m. deadline had turned in incorrect transcripts.

Firak said that as soon as the Bursar’s office realized the mistake, it alerted the Career Development Center, and the deadline was extended until the following week for students affected by the mistake.

Firak said the mistype was a human error. When grades were transferred from paper to computer, they were put into the wrong line on the spreadsheet, causing grades to be assigned to the wrong people, she said. In other words, each grade got moved one line below where it belonged.

The error affected three classes: Civil Procedures I, a 100-level course, had widespread errors, while two unnamed upper level classes had a few isolated mistakes.

“There was nothing incorrect about the way the course was evaluated or assessed,” Firak said.

The students whose transcripts were erroneously entered had to reprint their grades and resend them to prospective employers.

“I think for most people it wasn’t a big deal, just for the ones that sent r’eacute;sum’eacute;s out as soon as they got their grades,” said Andrew Vandiver, a first year law student and Student Bar Association representative.

The students who were most upset were those who had sent out their information as soon as it became available. At the time of press, none of them had been reached for comment.

After noticing the error, the Bursar’s office made plans to come in Jan. 19 to correct the error. “Four people came in and worked about six hours to review every grade, every course and every student,” Firak said.

Once the errors were corrected, some students’ grades went up enough to allow them to apply for jobs and internships. Those whose grade went down did not have to withdraw their applications. “It’s a mistake that shouldn’t have happened, but they handled it pretty well,” Vandiver said.