The Chicago Transit Authority accidentally disabled UPasses for about 5,000 DePaul University students today, causing headaches and hassles for students who ride the CTA’s buses and El trains.

While students can still get on trains and buses by simply showing their passes to bus drivers or customer assistants at stations, the cards won’t be reactivated until the weekend, says Noelle Gaffney, a spokeswoman for the CTA.

“This just happened today, so we’re still working through all the details, figuring out exactly what happened, but obviously this isn’t supposed to happen,” Gaffney says.

A CTA worker saw a full list of DePaul students with UPasses and mistakenly assumed it was the list of students whose cards needed to be disabled, Gaffney says.

"It's not DePaul's fault or Marquis'. It's the CTA's responsibility," she says. Marquis ID Systems is in charge of printing, activating and deactivating the cards.

 This is the first time in the 10 years the CTA has run the UPass program that cards have been accidentally deactivated. No other campuses are affected, Gaffney says.

Three students had their cards confiscated, says DePaul spokesman John Holden.

"Apparently that's part of the typical protocol," Holden says. "I don't know if they were confiscated or just taken because they were thought not to be working."

The university has sent an email to all students, faculty and staff explaining the situation, Holden says. The outage affects a third of the roughly 15,000 DePaul students who have a UPass.

"It was an inconvenience to the students, but I think they're working as expeditiously as possible to remedy the situation."

Officials at Marquis could not immediately be reached for comment.

Students having problems with their cards can call 312-362-8765 or send an e-mail to tcc@depaul.edu, Holden says. The university can issue temporary passes to those who need them.