Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I hear by request a petition in support of re-grading my final MATH 112 exam. I currently do not have access to my final exam as it was denied by Professor Kani and Professor Taylor. After a long string of emails, Professor Kani was able to outline my final grade with each assessment and midterm listed with their corresponding marks. I was given a final grade of 48% which I strong and truly believe is completely unfair.
I noticed an inconsistency of marking with Professor Kani from the beginning of the course. When receiving back assignments on crowdmark, no explanation or definitive reason is given when marks are taken off. A simple ??-0.25? is written or a large ??X? on the page without any reasoning or frankly, any words at all. Even though I never chose to appeal the marks given to me for the Assignments by Professor Kani, I still believe that a few were marked unfairly and unjust. For example, Question 2 on Assignment 3 was given back to me as 2/6 with a blue X on the page. I currently do not have access to the MATH 112 course anymore to compare and review the posted correct answer to mine listed on crowdmark, but for the amount of work shown for this question I find it hard to believe that 2/6 fair, and an overall mark of 43.3%. With math, knowing this for about 15 years now, part marks are always assigned. Regardless of what level of math you are learning and teaching, the steps taken to find the right answer, nonetheless if the final number is correct or not, the question deserves part marks. MATH 121 is an excellent example of this, which is a comparative course to MATH 112 just with a different curriculum. Since I took MATH 121 in 2021, I do not recall my personal marks very well, but what I can remember is that Professor Ableson and Professor Li would reward students with part marks when attempting and completing any question given that be on an assignment, midterm or final exam. This is something that Professor Kani lacks, and takes away from students, rewarding them with a lower, unfair grade. To add on with the inconsistency of marking with Professor Kani, I did appeal my midterm grade and was rewarded 0.5 a mark when I asked for question 1 to be regraded. Once again, an unfair mark given, with a mistake in marking. Professor Kani refuses to reward students with part marks when it is clearly deserved, just because the wrong answer is listed. With math comes silly mistakes, and we all can take responsibility for small mistakes made, but this does not mean that we should be penalized and deemed unfit for learning. As mentioned before, I do not have access to my final exam, but with the pattern that I have notice throughout the semester from Professor Kani, I can only imagine how unfair and stern the marking was on the final exam after all pages were filled with confident answers that I can proudly say I wrote down. Thus, resulting in a 33% on the final exam.
As people with a strong academic career, we can confide in others during exam season and know how difficult that time of year can be. Normally, I am strong willed, level-headed, and calm during exam season. However, this was not the case during April 2023. I watn to start off by saying that I take full responsibility in not coming forward sooner with my concerns before writing exams instead of having to deal with the repercussions afterwards, but I feel like my voice should be heard for reconsidering. I was experiencing an extenuating circumstance 3 days before the MATH 112 final exam which led to a poor performance by me. I suffer from anxiety and depression which has taken a huge toll on my personal and academic life that was just pushed over the edge during exam season, right before the MATH 112 exam. With a total of 5 exams and 2 of them back to back, being able to succeed to my fullest ability along with the struggle of mental health seemed to be light years away. Also, the no support from faculty and Queen??s overall did not help the situation any better. I truly regret not reaching out to the Arts and Science faculty to defer the MATH 112 exam, because I know if I did, I would have done much better on the final exam (excluding Professor Kani??s marking inconsistency). The condescending and reprimanding that I experienced from Professor Kani??s emails did not help de-escalate the situation at all and saying that ??in many cases it seems that you have no clue about how to do the question? continued to discredit my knowledge and made it seem that I put in no work whatsoever. If Professor Kani took the time to get to know who I am as a student and a person, I could have let him know my struggles and that I actually love math and did well in MATH 121. But instead received reprimanding comments via email.
Another option that I would like for you to consider is to re-weigh the percentages of the final exam and assignments. In previous years (which I know for a fact because friends who have taken MATH 112 in fall 2022 semester old me this), the assignments and midterm was given the possibility of being re-weighed. If the faculty noticed that (Professor Taylor??s words) ??this year the failure rates were unusually high in most of the 1st and 2nd year courses? how come something productive hasn??t been done about this? I actually think that this would be such a fair advantage to so many first and possibly second year students who took MATH 112 to successfully pass the course JUST like students in previous years. I am proposing, if the assignments could be weighed as 35% and the final as 40%. This would give me a passing grade which would allow me to continue with 3rd year without any interruptions and setbacks. I personally do not agree with the inconsistency of this course, where each semester based on the Professor??s personal liking, assignments, midterms, and exams could be weighed differently, and your grade is essentially based on luck of who you get. I think that a set and stone marking scheme should be followed by EACH professor, carried onto every class, so that everyone has a fair shot at passing or failing the course. For example, the Professor who taught MATH 112 in fall gave the students the proposed weighting I stated above. If I just decided to take MATH 112 in the fall, I would have passed the course with a 52%. But, unfortunately I just decided to enrol in the winter semester and got stuck with the assignments being worth 25% and the exam being worth 50%, which caused me to fail the course by 2%.