Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern;
I would like to formally appeal the grade I received on my final examination for DEVS 293 marked by Professor Reena Kukreja. I also believe my original instructor demonstrates bias towards me and my work and is unfit to be one of the reviewers to re-mark my paper.

The first reason I am appealing my final exam:

In total in my exam I used two booklets. The second booklet following the first. Upon leaving the examination hall I handed my papers to the proctor who insisted that she must staple all the pages together inside my first booklet. I did not argue and assumed my professor would be able to recognize that the proctor had done this and upon marking take the booklets apart and read them as intended.

This is not the case. When my professor received my examination, she did not put the booklets in the proper order but marked the exam in the order it had been incorrectly stapled and even making a comment one of the exam pages that;(where is this from) signaling her frustration with the pages and, in my view, this contributed to the assigned failing grade of 48.
On the day of receiving my grade online I e-mailed Professor Kukreja asking for a meeting. Two days later I received a reply that she would meet with me in six days (on May 8). I responded asking if the mark was a mistake and, as it was upsetting, could we meet earlier. I was told no.

Upon meeting with my Professor for a review of my examination:

1. To my dismay, even with me present, Professor Kukreja was unwilling to unstaple the booklets and place them in the proper order.
2. She brought up a criticism claiming that my midterm in her course had been disorganized as justification for the marks I was receiving on my final exam which demonstrates that she is bias against me and seemed to wish to teach me a lesson rather than provide a fair grade that only considered the exam.
3. She was unprofessional in our meeting claiming she knows that online people call her, and I quote, (a hard marker and a bitch). This both made me uncomfortable and showed that she had not met with me to address my concerns but to somehow try to defend herself.
4. During the review in which we only went through two of my questions I did not feel that she was paying attention to what I was saying. She said what she was looking for in the first question and I proceeded to explain how my response was an adequate response. She immediately suggested I could appeal the exam grade. We moved on to another question and the same thing happened with her saying I should appeal the grade and one comment about how I could have expanded upon what I meant by orientalism.
5. I returned to her office once more after consulting with the department head Professor Marcus Taylor on what my next steps should be (he was very helpful). At this point I asked Professor Kukreja if she could please photocopy my exam so that I would be able to take it with me to look through the questions and write up an explanation of why I deserved higher grades. She did do this for me but not before going to the trouble of asking Barbara at the Development Studies office if students were allowed to have a copy of the exam - which from my perspective made me feel as if she were attempting not to give me a photocopy of my exam hoping that I would have trouble appealing it. Further, she was careless and disrespectful in her photocopying providing me with a copy that had pages that were upside down, out of order and often copied sideways so that many of the sentences were cut off.

Why I should receive a higher grade:

I fully answered the questions on this exam. Every answer is grounded in class materials as she indicated was desired in the exam preparation class. I can only guess that Professor Kukreja upon first glance, found my exam to be hard to follow, which created a bias that was carried through her subsequent marking. I am not suggesting that I wrote an A exam, however, I am a fourth-year student with (excluding this course) a B+ average and, in my view, I did not write a failing exam.

As an example, below is a list of all the course links present and terms from class utilized and explained in my response to question 8 which came primarily from week 9 lectures and readings:

1.Copenhagen school from class article (Hammerstad and Hanson)
2. governmentality (Foucault)
3.Specific mention of a video we watched in class which was an advertisement from Australia
4.Xenophobia
5.An explanation of Durable solutions
6. repatriation defined
7.Resettlement defined
8.re-integration defined
7.Reference to 1st lecture discussion about the majority of refugees being housed in the global South- which was based upon a video clip we watched.
8. Securitization (what the Copenhagen school was created in response to)
9. Example of a speech act which informs public policy (Donald trump demonizing Latinos)
10. Politics of fear
11. Self policing
12. protracted refugee situations defined
13. eluding to the perceived refugee crisis (as an exaggerated situation)
14. desire not to accommodate and care for Refugee populations - evident due to a shift in the international refugee regime - an example of Neo- Malthusian sentiment.
15. dominance of right-wing attitudes in refugee discourse
16. eluding to how the global south is not about open its borders but that the opposite trend is the current trajectory.
17. reference to the many refugee existing in limbo
18. reference to tendency to fear refugees
19. elude to dominance of Rhetoric of global south refugees swarming to the global North.
20. Refugee discourse as a concept discussed at multiple points in my response.

For this question I received 12 out of 20, which was my highest grade on the exam. I have made 20 links to course material in this response not to mention marks I should receive for structure of response or clarity or anything else. On other questions I was graded as low as 7 out of 20. These marks are not reflective of my understanding of the course material nor of the way I applied this understanding to the exam questions.
I wrote a DEVS 392 exam two days before this one, in which I felt I produced similar quality work, and received a grade 30 percent higher. Something does not add up. For all these reasons I ask that you ensure this exam is reviewed by two alternate instructors who will mark this paper in a professional and non-bias manner.

Thank-you for taking the time to read this appeal.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me for any questions or clarifications. Also upon request I am happy to provide further course documentation for the course which demonstrates why each question on the exam should be reviewed.

Alexander Hodgins
11arh3@queensu.ca