Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

I understood at the beginning of the semester that I needed to be enrolled in 6 courses in the Arts & Science faculty this winter term to be eligible to graduate in the spring of 2020. I was enrolled in 6, but only recently found out that one of my 6 courses (GLPH 271) was actually in the faculty of Health, and therefore would not contribute towards me completing my degree. Last week I was in Ottawa participating in Queen's Model Parliament, and only received an email informing me of this problem from the registrar's office the day before the add class deadline was. I was not able to swap the course for another Arts and Science course in time. I was very occupied with the parliamentary proceedings and, probably of my own fault, did not have school or degree requirements on my mind. This has gotten me particularly panicked because I have applied to a number of graduate programs which require me to have graduated if I wanted to attend and be enrolled in fall of 2020. I just want to shine light on the possible missed educational possibilities if I was not able to graduate in the spring because I was one elective short. Should I be accepted in to any of these graduate programs, it would be a huge disappointment to myself and my family if I were to have to decline because I had not graduated yet, and then come back to Queen's just to complete a single course. In addition, financially I would take a big hit as many of the schools required application fees of more than 100. So for these reasons, I plead with the appeal committee to accept my request to add the course CLST 205 after January 17th. This course is open, and for what it is worth, I was originally enrolled in it at the beginning of the semester so I was attending classes (until I dropped it, thinking I would enjoy GLPH 271 more) meaning I would not be that far behind anyways.

Thank you for your consideration,

Brannan Riley