Students assume when a scholarship acceptance letter comes, the money will be there.

However, 39 students from across the country recently were told they would receive government scholarships for graduate study but were later informed they were just alternates.

In atonement for the mistake, the U.S. Department of Education decided to give the Jacob K. Javits Fellowships to both the alternates and the original recipients.

Earl Dowling, director of Financial Aid, said mishaps such as the Javits Fellowship mix-up could happen anywhere.

“We’re human. Mistakes can be made just about anywhere,” he said. “I think that mistakes can happen at Iowa State. We hope they don’t. We try to make sure they don’t.”

Dowling said he was pleased the Department of Education decided to award the scholarships to the alternates anyway, when they could have just apologized.

“I’m glad they didn’t,” he said. “I’m pleased for the students.”

He said the Department of Education determined once the students had already been notified they were receiving the scholarship and were not fraudulent on their application, the students should receive the scholarship anyway.

The mistake was made when the contractor, DTI Associates of Arlington, Va., sent out the wrong letters to the alternates. The mistake could cost taxpayers nearly $1 million if all of the alternates accept the fellowships.

“I suspect there’s been many conversations between the Department of Education and the contractor,” Dowling said.

Some ISU graduate students agreed that the Department of Education made the right decision in giving the alternates the money.

“It’s unfortunate that that’s the way it happened, but if they promised them [the fellowship], then they can’t renege on that,” said Brian Kegler, graduate student in health and human performance.

Robert Johnson, graduate student in English, said he could understand how the students must have felt.

“I could certainly sympathize with the students who thought they were going to get the scholarship and then told they were not,” he said. “Graduate students can use any kind of help that they find available to them.”

He said the contractor should have to share some of the cost in repairing the mistake.

However, other graduate students said an admittance of the mistake and an apology from the government should have sufficed.

Adam Miller, graduate student in botany, said as a graduate student, he has had to learn to deal with being told he was getting something and then being told he was not.

“I think it’s something you just have to get used to,” he said.

Miller said he thought it was nice that the government wanted to correct the error, but he did not believe taxpayers should have to pay for it. He said the mistake was less significant than if the students had actually been awarded the scholarship and then it had been taken away.

“The problem was just in the notification itself,” Miller said. “They never had the award in the first place.”

Anna Tesdahl, graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, said while she would feel awful if it happened to her, she did not believe the taxpayers should have to pay the extra money for the error.

“It was a mistake, and the fact is that the taxpayers shouldn’t be held responsible for someone else’s mistake,” she said.