Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: This issue started in late November, after receiving my exam for the second midterm of CHEM281. When I collected my exam from the TA, there was one question that I thought was correct, but was marked as incorrect. When I asked the TA present for clarification, they confirmed that it was correct and directed me to contact my professor (Dr. John Carran) regarding changing the mark on that question. When I reached out regarding that one question, Dr. Carran responded: Be aware that I will also look at your other questions and will remove marks that should not have been given and I mark less leniently than my TAs. After this email which essentially guaranteed I would receive an even lower mark if I went to Dr. Carran, I decided to leave the issue and move on. During the final exam period in December 2019, I was very ill and got my CHEM281 final exam deferred to January 6th, 2020. During the whole semester, Dr. Carran had continuously alluded to not memorizing the details of the reaction mechanisms but rather, the reagents and products. He also posted some notes following the main final exam in December, which also had no mention of detailed mechanisms, as he had always said to not memorize them. I was therefore surprised when there was a question that asked for the detailed mechanism of a reaction, despite his saying to not study the details. After the exam, I emailed him regarding this discrepancy to which he said: As advised this was a different exam with a different focus. I replied: when you said the exam would have a 'different focus', I assumed the types of reactions tested would be changed to ensure fairness. I did not expect the level of understanding or memorization to change, as that would be unfair to those who wrote the make-up exam, to which he said I was mistaken. Furthermore, he said that because he no longer had TAs to mark the make-up exams, he would be marking them himself. This also raised concern to me, as he had previously explicitly stated that he marks harder and less leniently than his TAs. My grade in CHEM281 dropped from an 84 to a B, in the 74-76 range from the final exam. I feel like I was disadvantaged and almost punished for going through the accommodations and exam-deferral process. I will now always write my exams on the main scheduled date, no matter how ill I am, since I was truly disadvantaged by this entire process. In conclusion, the complete change of exam difficulty and focus, accompanied by the fact that Dr. Carran said that he marks harder than his TAs (which marked the rest of the class' exams) warrants an appeal of my grade in CHEM281. I do not think the questions on the exam were remotely of equal difficulty to those on the main cohort exam, and thus I would like to have my grade investigated. There are many red pen marks on my final exam, and I would like those removed if my exam is re-marked. I would definitely like someone to compare the difficulties of the two exams and see how different in difficulty they really were.