Through a “clerical” error, 55 students found their political science 100 class cancelled after add/drop lines had closed.

J. Dixon Essecks, political science assistant director, said POLS 100 section 3 was supposed to be cancelled Dec. 3 along with sections 4 and 7, but because of an error the section remained open.

Second-semester seniors were accommodated with another POLS 100 section and the department tried to place other students in different political science courses, Essecks said.

However, Essecks said he was “horrified” to discover students showed up at class Jan. 20 expecting a teacher.

Because section 3 was not cancelled, “a lot of students were inconvenienced,” Essecks said. “I will double-check (and) avoid the problem in the future.”

The department was informed Nov. 30 that funds would not be available to pay teacher’s salaries for three sections of POLS 100, Essecks said.

However, before semester break, the provost’s office declared funding would be available for four additional sections of the course, sections 9, 10 ,11 and 12.

Students enrolled in sections 3, 4 and 7 were supposed to be placed into one of the four newly opened sections, Essecks said.

Since students were not informed that section 3 was cancelled until after add/drop, they could not enroll in the four new sections.

Essecks said, if an employee who has a higher salary resigns, money to fund his salary would go toward funding lower salaried teachers.

However, he said the dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences could not find additional funds to allocate until the provost approved money to LA&S, Essecks said.