Wednesday, October 31, 2001

Anthrax Halts Mail at Princeton; Some Colleges Adopt 'Flexible' Application Deadlines By ERIC HOOVER Princeton University suspended delivery of all outside mail Monday after a single anthrax spore was found on a mail bin at the post office that serves the university. Princeton and several other universities have also announced that they will be flexible about their November 1 deadlines for early-decision applications. The post office, in West Windsor, N.J., receives the university's incoming U.S. mail. Although preliminary results from testing for additional anthrax at the facility were negative, the post office remained closed Tuesday. Princeton officials said the university could resume deliveries of U.S. mail as early as today. Meanwhile, in response to the recent closings of other post offices in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., Princeton announced it will be "flexible" with respect to the early-decision application deadline. Although applicants still must postmark their forms by November 1, university officials recognize that mail slowdowns could delay the arrival of many applications, said Fred Hargadon, Princeton's dean of admissions. "Our concern is with a student whose documents are not arriving through no fault of their own," Mr. Hargadon said. "This is normally an anxious time for students anyway, and we want them to know that they don't have to panic. The guillotine's not coming down on them." A message on Princeton's Web site Tuesday urged early-decision applicants who had sent their forms after October 19 -- and those who had not yet mailed their forms -- to immediately fax a copy of part of their application to the admissions office in order to establish a file for each person. The message urged prospective students not to "lose sleep over whether applications completed late because of mail delays will be disadvantaged in any way." The University of Pennsylvania, which also has a November 1 early-decision deadline, made a similar announcement Tuesday. "We're encouraging students to uses faxes and FedEx, and just generally trying to be reassuring to them," said Margaret Porigow, director of operations for the admissions office at Penn. At least one institution had already extended its early-application deadlines before the first reports of anthrax in early October. Within a week of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the University of Virginia announced on its Web site that it would accept applications postmarked as late as November 8 "because of the known and unknown impact of the tragedy." Although many other colleges did not extend their deadlines, admissions officials at nearly a dozen institutions contacted by The Chronicle said that they were prepared for delays and that they would handle applicants' mail-related difficulties on a case-by-case basis. Issues in depth: Background articles on the terrorist attacks and academe Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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