Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you today to appeal for an early return to studies so that I may enroll in summer courses.

I was unaware that taking a summer course before my year off, would affect taking summer courses following the year of my withdrawal. On my original appeal letter that I received early May, it stated that if I was enrolled in any summer courses at the time I had received the letter, I would have to drop them immediately, or withdraw from studies for 3 terms if I wished to continue on in the course. At the time, this rule did not apply to me because I wasn¿¿t enrolled in any summer courses. After dealing with some Queens support staff who helped me make my appeal, I had decided that taking a summer course would be a good idea to show the board that my GPA would have been on a positive trajectory for my appeal. After less than a month, I emailed Jill Atkinson outlining my appeal for success which included taking a summer course later in July, so that I may have a better chance at success during my third year of studies. When Jill Atkinson emailed me on June 21st denying my appeal, she was aware that I had a summer course that hadn¿¿t started, and was still able to drop regardless of any penalties I might have incurred for doing so. Knowing that I was still able to drop the course in order to return May 2019, she told me the earliest I can return to any studies is September 2019, and had no other option, and had no mention of being able to start any earlier. The summer course I was enrolled in had not started yet, and Jill had not said anything to me about dropping the course to be able to study during Summer 2019. If Jill had made me aware that I had the option to drop the course before it started, I would have dropped the course, so that I could start in May 2019, instead of September 2019. As such, this lack of information caused me to change my appeal drastically because I was now appealing to waive the requirement to withdraw for three terms, when I could have just stopped at the first level of appeal, dropped my summer course and came back to Queens in May 2019. Although this appeal went through three levels, no one had any mention (on paper or in person) of the ability that I had, to drop this course before hand to save me the trouble of this appeal.

Please note that the appeal processes took from May until October 17th and as such, the timing of the appeal processes last summer did not allow me to drop the course before the appeal processes were complete. Since I was only informed of one option I had, I couldn¿¿t drop the summer course until a decision had been made because the course was such an integral part of my appeal, seeing as how it was the only way I could boost my GPA before the school year started and the only way to show any form of improvement to the Board of Studies. The course ended much before I had a verdict from the USAB, so if I had known I could have dropped the course beforehand, I would not have had to appeal to the USAB. As the process of appealing is stressful, it would have been appropriate to be informed of the full impact of the summer course on my return date and particularly any options that remained at that point. (I did not receive a final Board of Studies decision until September 11, 2018).

Given the circumstances, I would like to ask that my hold be lifted, so that I may be able to take summer courses, to boost my GPA so that I May have a successful upcoming fall term and set myself up for success for the two years.

I would be grateful for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

Noah Levine