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U .S .

Missed Pickup Means a Missed Opportunity for 30 Seeking a Fellowship By DEAN E. MURPHYFEB. 5, 2004 A missed courier pickup, an honest clerk and an uny ielding federal bureaucracy have conspired to deny 30 college students here the chan ce to compete for a prestigious Fulbright research grant.

''It seems surreal to me,'' said Mary Ann Mason, de an of the graduate division at the University of California, Berkeley. ''It is an unnecessary, foolish, tragic incident.'' The students, all enrolled in doctoral studies, got the news on Tuesday night from the university's chancellor, Robert M. Berdahl , that their applications were disqualified because they were late. Dr. Berdahl ha d earlier flown to Washington in a failed bid to persuade education officials in the B ush administration to change their minds.

''For these students to lose out on the opportunity to compete for the Fulbright award in this way is outrageous,'' Dr. Berdahl said . ''No one could have imagined the Department of Education could have reacted the way it did.'' The department, which administers the Fulbright-Hay s Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship Program, rejected the ap plications because they were not mailed by the Oct. 20 deadline, according to a letter to Dr. Berdahl from Sally L. Stroup, an assistant secretary of education.On that day, the applications were in an envelope a t the university's Sproul Hall for pickup by Federal Express. But the courier did not come until the next morning because of a ''software glitch,'' said Sandra Munoz , a FedEx spokeswoman.

The company provided the university with two letter s acknowledging the mix-up and accepting blame for the late delivery. I t also backdated the shipment's air bill to reflect the intended Oct. 20 pickup dat e.

''We realize how serious this is, and the inconveni ence we are causing everyone,'' Ms. Munoz said. ''We certainly apologize.'' Late in the day on Oct. 20, an employee with the un iversity's graduate division sent an explanation by e-mail to the Education Depa rtment, which told the university to send the applications with the explan ation from FedEx, university officials said.

For months, the university officials assumed the pr oblem had been worked out.

But the e-mail exchange, Dr. Mason said, came back to haunt them. It was cited last month by lawyers for the department as grounds for rejecting the applications, she said. Since the air bill had been backdated, the co rrespondence was apparently the only evidence that the applications had not been se nt on time.

''The final terrible remark of the lawyers was, 'If you hadn't e-mailed Washington, we would have let it go because we woul dn't have known there was a problem,' '' Dr. Mason said.

The implicit message, she said, was, ''Honesty is n ot the best policy.'' A spokeswoman for the Department of Education did n ot respond to several telephone messages seeking comment. In a statement released Wednesday, Assistant Secretary Stroup defended the decision.

''Although we are very sorry for UC Berkeley's grad uate students who had hopes of Fulbright-Hays doctoral fellowships, the facts a re indisputable: UC Berkeley was negligent in failing to mail its application on tim e, despite the fact that for years the university has applied for this program each fall,'' she said.

''When it became apparent that Federal Express woul d not arrive in time, a simple trip to the post office would have ensured t hat the university's application met the deadline,'' she said. ''Sixty other institu tions met the application deadline.'' Last year, 15 of the 30 applicants from Berkeley we re awarded Fulbright fellowships, ranging from $20,000 to $64,000.

In retrospect, the officials said, it would have be en prudent to take the package to a nearby FedEx office or the post office, but no one had envisioned a delivery error would have such consequences. Now, officials are lo oking to FedEx to bring about some sort of happy ending.

Dr. Mason said lawyers for the university were ''ta lking with FedEx about sharing some responsibility.'' She said one idea wa s that FedEx would provide some doctoral research grant money.

Ms. Munoz said FedEx was eager to resolve the situa tion.

''Obviously,'' she said, ''our goal is always 100 p ercent customer satisfaction.'' Jason Seawright, one of the applicants, said that w hile he would appreciate any help, it would be hard for any other grant to match the résumé-building force of a Fulbright.