VIENNA — Steps are being taken to release student transcripts from Ohio Valley University, a representative of the trust for the defunct school said Wednesday.

The receivership maintaining much of the school’s property on behalf of bondholders filed a motion recently in Wood County Circuit Court seeking to abandon its claim on the records, which a Facebook post earlier this month claimed had been lost.

The statement was released by Martin Sheehan, an attorney representing the OVU Windup Trust, and the filing could not be immediately verified with the Wood County Circuit Clerk’s office outside its regular business hours.

“This is a big step on the road to settling the other issues and getting this fully resolved,” Sheehan said Wednesday.

The board of directors for the private, Church of Christ-affiliated school decided in December to close, facing mounting debt and the impending loss of its ability to confer degrees. The windup trust was established in part to help seniors complete their degrees, but some students have reported an inability to obtain their transcripts in order to continue their education at other institutions.

A Sept. 2 post to the OVU Updates Facebook page by Wes Crum, former vice president of academic affairs, said the records had been deleted from the server after it was allegedly hacked. Sheehan has previously disputed this and said in the release that the records are secure.

However, there are multiple steps that must be taken before they can be released, he said.

“What to a casual observer seems like it should have been a simple transfer of records has actually been more complex,” the statement said.

One factor is OVU’s right to withhold documents like transcripts from students who owe the institution money.

“The existence of the bankruptcy and the receivership did not alter those rights,” the statement said. “Collection of any monies that were due have been a significant responsibility of the officials appointed in those proceedings.”

The motion to relinquish the rights to the records, if granted, would remove the ability for the receivership to withhold transcripts, the statement said.

“The receivership believes they have collected all they think they can collect,” Sheehan said.

The granting of the motion would “allow the records to be lawfully delivered to the Ohio Valley University Windup Trust,” the statement said. “The expectation is that the Windup Trust will now continue to place those records with another institution of higher learning … The recent actions of the receiver will make that process significantly simpler.”

The statement said backup copies of the school’s server exist and there are “voluminous paper records.”

“The data, including transcripts, addresses and Social Security numbers formerly held by Ohio Valley University remain secure,” it said. “That information was not hacked. This can be said with confidence because the server has not been connected to the internet for some time.”

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com.