Former Mather House resident Benjamin B. Paloff '99, one of 1,659 seniors who accepted a diploma at Commencement, was a little perturbed when the registrar asked him to give it back.

"My father had had the damn thing framed, and it was already hanging on his wall," Paloff wrote in an e-mail message.

Paloff's fellow Mather seniors also received a letter from the registrar's office last month saying their diplomas were invalid due to a printing error--the titles of House Master Sandra A. Naddaff '75 and Co-Master Leigh G. Hafrey '73 had been switched--and that the certificates had to be mailed back in exchange for correct ones.

"We have sent each Mather House graduate a postage-paid mailer to use to return their incorrect diploma to use and we have printed a new, correct diploma for each of the graduates," Registrar Arlene F. Becella said.

According to Becella, the error was made when Harvard Printing and Publications Services, which produces diplomas for all Harvard graduates, changed to a new production process. Diploma data was shifted to a spreadsheet, where Naddaff and Hafrey's names got shuffled.

"Some of the data did not move into the correct place on the spreadsheet and one of the errors that was not caught was the master/co-master names for Mather House," Becella said.

"It was only after the diplomas had been given to the students that the error was discovered, unfortunately," she said. upset about the mix-up, saying that the mistake "was not a big deal."

"It's not really that much of a problem," said Meredith M. Bagley '99, who said she had not noticed the mistake until the letter brought it to her attention.

Paloff said he was irritated that the registrar's office labeled the diplomas as invalid, calling the error "a purely trivial matter."

"It often seems [the University] is more interested in fussing over trivialities and pomp than addressing substantive issues," he wrote.

But most students shrugged the mistake off and have already exchanged their diplomas for corrected ones.

"Graduation isn't about a piece of paper, anyway," Bagley said