Nearly one quarter of the student body received a supposedly-confidential e-mail message yesterday, which just happened to list the names of 1,300 fellow work study recipients.

Intending to alert students to jobs in public service, the Federal Work Study Office accidentally failed to "suppress" the e-mail addresses of half of the recipients.

The result was an easily accessible master list of students eligible for work study--a breach of privacy in many students' eyes.

"Although students shouldn't be ashamed to receive financial aid, it is sensitive and the office should have been more discreet," said Manisha S. Shetty '00. "Just scrolling through the list is violating confidentiality."

In a second e-mail to students yesterday afternoon, Director of Student Employment Martha H. Homer apologized for the inconvenience of a long message, but did not acknowledge a confidentiality breach.

"We had intended to suppress the recipients' list and not have you scroll through several hundred names," Homer wrote to students.

Later in the day, Homer told The Crimson that "we did not want to be the first to bring up the breach of confidence if it hadn't been an issue."

The lack of privacy regarding their financial aid status did not seem to bother most students affected.