Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: January 28th, 2021

To whomever this may concern,

I am appealing to drop the courses CLST 102 (Intro to Greek Civilization - Dr. Drew Griffith) and GRMN 101 (Beginner¿¿s German - Dr. Monika Holzschuh) for the Fall 2020 semester.

The reasons for my appeal relate to my mental health disability, a delayed renewal of my accommodations from QSAS (resulting in a lack of accommodation documents), as well as the change to a purely online approach due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On October 18th, 2020, I reached out to Professor Griffith (CLST 102) to inform them of my disability caused absence since week 2 of the term. Next, when attempting to send my online request for accommodations through the QSAS portal, I was unable to have them sent to my professors since I needed a new note to reflect my service animal arrangement.

I was informed that I had submit new documentation for my service animal in training because of a new system. I received this completed document in my email on November 25th, 2020, but this was not found and sent to QSAS until January 18th, 2021. Thus, throughout the entire semester, I was unable to access my accommodation documents and could not complete the course.

On October 26th, Professor Holzschuh from GRMN 101 reached out to me by email with the concern of my absence in the course for a number of weeks. I informed Professor Holzschuh on November 10th, 2020 of my intent to appeal to drop the course when I realized after many attempts that I could not learn a new language with the new purely online format (due to COVID-19). I then began the process of submitting my previous appeal to drop this course, which at the time, only included GRMN 101. At the time, I was still awaiting on documentation from my physician to send to QSAS in order to get my accommodation letters for CLST 102. I was still hopeful I would be able to get my accommodation letters in order to work on the course, but this never happened.

By the end of November, I was sure I needed to amend my appeal to reflect that I wanted to drop two courses and felt extremely overwhelmed. Due to my disability, I lost the awareness that I had not amended my appeal and forgot to get documentation to support that appeal. Instead, my mind was solely focused on completing EMPR 331, and was able to complete the course with an A+.

As I¿¿m trying to move forward with the winter 2021 semester, I am 3 credits away from graduation and have reconnected with my counselor. She has provided me with documentation to support my appeal to drop GRMN 101 and CLST 102 from the fall 2020 semester. At the moment, I have requested an appointment to meet with my QSAS advisor to finalize my accommodation documents since a complication has arisen from the new documents I have submitted. It seems that they have taken the new documents for my animal in training and applied them to my current service animal who is going into retirement in a few years.

The changes I will be applying moving forward include monthly sessions with my counselor, a personal assessment of courses before the academic drop date, as well as a commitment to participate in mindfulness groups offered through SWS. I will also be meeting with my QSAS advisor to set straight the issue of my accommodations and documents so that I can have my accommodations for this term.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my appeal request. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out and ask. The best way to contact me is by phone at 647-268-1899 during the afternoon.

Michelle Chu