Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am appealing for a credit standing in HIST 122 and ENGL 100 as I have completed and passed all of the course work, including the final examination, but because of an illness beyond my control, earned a lower grade than expected. Additionally, I am requesting to waive the 21-day appeal deadline, as I was unaware that there was such a deadline for this application. I had spoken with a course counsellor on the phone to discuss my options, before my final grades had been posted because I feared that my grades would be lower due to the exams. In March of 2016, I began experiencing abdominal discomfort and digestive issues, which my doctor had been notified about. I had booked an appointment for when I would return home after exams to discuss further solutions to these issues. In addition to these issues that I had been dealing with off and on since March, I had developed flu like symptoms during the week leading up to the exams. However, I still continued to study and planned on writing these exams despite this illness. On the day of my english exam, I felt very ill and so I contacted Student Accessibility Services to inform them of this, because they had been coordinating my exams. They suggested that I email my professors before the exam to let them know that I am ill but would be writing the exams. Right before the ENGL 100 exam, I received a response to my email from Professor J. Pierce who wrote that, If you are feeling extremely ill at the exam, it might be better not to write it. If you are ill during the exam, it might be possible to reweight the outcome. Let me know how you are feeling as things progress. I ended up attending the english exam in an effort to finish the course strong and completed as much as I could despite my illness. I wanted to give the exam as much as I could before giving out. As this illness was getting progressively worse during the exam, I began completing an outline of my essay and managed to even start the essay itself. About one third into the exam, I became seriously ill and so after the exam proctor notified Professor Pierce, they advised me to take a taxi to Kingston General Hospital. During my HIST 122 exam, I once again experienced the same symptoms as I did throughout the English exam, but took medication before writing to prevent this incident from happening again. Professor Weldemichael came by the examination office at the beginning of the exam, but at that point I was doing okay, hence why there were no reports at that time. I was moving through the first part of the exam fine, but this was short lived as soon after my symptoms reoccurred and began worsening. After many trips to the bathroom due to nausea and feeling light headed, I left early even thought I did not finish the exam, feeling unable to continue. The exam proctors were aware that I wasn't feeling well, but surprisingly they did not write a report. I do however think that they have documentation of the times I went to the bathroom because of the nausea I was experiencing. After emailing both Professors regarding this situation, they had told me that they had no choice but to mark my exam and what I had written, to avoid compromising the integrity of the exam. However, my performance on the exam did not correlate with my performance in these courses, which had been excellent throughout the whole semester. As someone who is dedicated and serious about their studies, it was very difficult for me to not attend my exams because I was ill. Thus, instead of cancelling my exams, and unknowing that this would be the best solution, I wanted to try my best to work through the exam and to finish off the course well. However, I was unaware that my illness throughout these exams would not be considered upon evaluation of my exam, despite that this illness was beyond my control. For this reason, I believe that the credit standing would be beneficial, as my final grade was not an accurate representation of my knowledge, understanding and success in the courses. My grades going into the exams were all in the A range, and because I worked very hard to receive those grades, I wanted to ensure that I kept them by doing well on these exams. Unfortunately, my illness prevented me from doing so.