Holly Perez received an email from the University Bursar this week saying that her direct deposit sign-up information to receive financial aid was electronically deleted in error.
About 3,900 students also received this email.
UF’s Student Financial Affairs accidently deleted student deposit accounts on July 11 while routinely cleaning up student records. The accounts are currently restored and in the process of being verified.
"When I got the email, I was frustrated," 22-year-old Perez wrote in an email. "Receiving that the first week of medical school when so much is already going on just added to my stress."
Students were asked to verify that their deposit account information is correct on their myUFL page and deactivate their account to create a new one if their information needs to be changed or updated.
Ruth Harris, a Bursar associate controller, said she has not yet encountered any students with accounts restored incorrectly.
"Some students are not here for the Summer and not in the mood for returning to school yet," Harris said. "We really want to hear if they see anything wrong."
This kind of error has never happened before, but Kim Simpson, who works in the Office of the Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, said it was a pretty normal course of business.
"The only inconvenience is we asked students to look at their direct deposit information," Simpson said. "It’s something students should be checking periodically anyway."
Ale Russian, a 20-year-old telecommunication junior, said she was worried because she relies on financial aid to pay for tuition and was scared it was going to affect her aid status. However, her information was restored correctly, and there were no major consequences.
“It was just a scary 10 minutes while I tried to figure out what was going on,” Russian said.
[A version of this story ran on pages 1-5 on 8/7/2014 under the headline "Direct deposit information deleted for thousands of UF students"]
