Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,

I am appealing to change my received grade of C to a pass/fail in the ANAT316 course.
I want to firstly apologize for not choosing this option sooner when it was available for all students. I did not do so due to my own naivety.
In mid May I emailed Professor Easteal to have my grade changed to a pass fail, but after he replied that he could not do so I assumed it was due to reasons that were out of my control. I now understand that I could have done so myself if I had done my own research, thus I apologize for the lack of effort on my end.
The reason why I believe my grade should be changed to a pass fail is because I believe I did not have a fair chance to improve my grade in the ANAT316 course.
Following the weekend of March 6th, I had an argument with my landlord who threatened to sue me for not wanting to pay a bedbug treatment, despite the situation being due to his own fault and negligence. Following his threats (which I have proof of in text messages), I decided to leave the house that same week after he began claiming I had overdue payments in addition to the treatment he was trying to make me pay.
Although I later found out that his demands were illegal, I decided to couch surf between houses before finding and moving into a new home on Johnson on March 15th. During this school week I did not attend classes due to feeling overwhelmed. The following week, classes were cancelled due to covid, and thus I lost my chance of using office hours or other in-person campus resources to better my own situation.
My anatomy grade did not meet my personal standards at this point, and so I aimed to do well on the lab exam the following week. However, due to technical difficulties with examity I was unable to do this exam. Although Professor Easteal was very accommodating for all the chaos that occurred during lockdown, I had no chance to improve my mark at this point besides doing well on my final exam.
As the term progressed during lockdown, I felt that my own mental health began to decline self isolation and eating poorly. I believe this was firstly because I could not go back to home to my parents as my bedroom was occupied by a student at UofT, and secondly because I could not see my friends in Kingston due to the self isolation protocols.
My final chance to improve my anatomy mark was thus on April 21st, where I hoped to succeed on the final exam. Despite Professor Easteal¿¿s considerate efforts to facilitate our completion and success on this exam, I feel that my own mental health had declined too far to complete the exam in a healthy state.
As I hope to enter a good graduate school after my fourth year at Queen¿¿s, I feel that this mark may impede on my odds in doing so.



Sincerely,


Saahir Bhunnoo
20068214