Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To Whom It May Concern:

I am appealing my final exam grade in PSYC 221, and consequently my final grade in the course. My posted exam grade was 44.3, curved to 47. The course had a requirement to pass the final exam in order to pass the course, resulting in a failing grade in the course, and placing my graduation this spring in jeopardy. I am requesting a review of the grading of the short answer questions on the exam, as well as Dr. Baker¿¿s actions with regard to the administration of the exam and its grading. It is my understanding that the instructor normally plays a role in the appeal process, except in cases where the instructor has shown a bias. I believe Dr. Baker has shown himself to be opposed to this process on a number of occasions, and request that he play no further part in this matter.

1. I was granted academic consideration valid from December 3, 2019 through January 30, 2020 due to a death in my family during the December 2019 exam period. Dr. Baker was fully aware of this but nonetheless, I was made to write the exam on January 10, 2020, clearly within the period of accommodations. This seems to me like blatant lack of regard for the process of academic consideration, and without a doubt negatively impacted my ability to perform on the exam. These accommodations exist for a reason, and explicitly acknowledged that I would not be performing at an acceptable level during this period.

2. Upon receiving my grade, I asked Dr. Baker if I could meet with him to review my exam. It is my perception that he was hostile towards this process from the beginning, as he stated in his reply that exam reviews aren¿¿t intended for reviewing the marking. When I arrived at his office at the arranged time, he was completely unprepared, and did not know which exam I had written despite our extensive previous communications on the subject. When I told Dr. Baker that I had written the deferred exam, I perceived a palpable change in his demeanor. Besides my perception of a clear bias against the process as a whole, once we started to review my exam, I had two major concerns:

a. Dr. Baker refused to provide an answer key to the short answer questions on the exam. He said that comparing my answers to an answer key would be unfair to students who didn¿¿t come to review their exam. I have limited experience with exam reviews, but I fail to see how there can be a legitimate exam review without providing the basis for the grading. I understand that normally an appeal of this kind would require that I identify specific discrepancies between the grading key and how my exam was marked. Unfortunately, I am unable to do so since Dr. Baker refused to provide one. Therefore I would request a complete review of all of the short answer questions on the exam.

b. It is well known that Dr. Baker intentionally writes difficult exams and using a curve to raise the grades to an acceptable level. I confirmed with Dr. Baker that the exam I wrote was different to the one written in December, but that I was graded on the same curve as the December exam. It is unreasonable to grade completely different exams on the same curve, the underlying statistics just don¿¿t support doing so. Dr. Baker said that there were 20 students who wrote the deferred exam, and given that we would all be performing at a lower than optimal mental state (paraphrasing), it would be unfair to have us curved separately. I first take issue with the argument that comparing students in like mental states would be more unfair than comparing compromised students to those under better circumstances. Regardless, even if our subpopulation was mentally optimal, I do not believe that curving different exams on the same curve is fair.