Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

New Information: The following is the letter requested from my father to confirm circumstances, I'm submitting it in this box as he sent it over by email so its no a full document.

At the request of further information towards the difficulty my son faced, I will try to do the best I can to outline the changes I saw and the adversity he faced. To begin, my son has always been an extroverted, energetic and outgoing person. Since he was young, any chance to be social whether it be time out with friends or time spent with people during sports, he always found a way to be with people. However over this year things changed pretty drastically especially as the school started. Without the ability to go out, thanks to Covid, he spent most of his time in his room, rarely coming down, mainly just for meals. Though it's true, many teenagers are prone to do that, we??ve always had a good relationship where we get the chance to spend time together and at a minimum he's normally out doing something or at least some kind of physical activity to keep himself occupied. But in this time frame he just seemed unenergetic and like he was in a continuous state of grogginess. It really looked like the effects of the lockdown and the world around him were taking some kind of toll. This continued at a down slope and I got worried as this went on but wanted to respect his choices and decisions and not bring it up to him. I've always tried to raise him to be independent because my mother was overbearing when I was around his age and I never wanted to push him away like what happened to me. At the time too, though I didn't want to ask him, I felt the passing of my cousin, Garnet Wilkins who Logan was extremely close with affected him too. Death is always a touchy subject and if he doesn't want to speak on it, I feel it best to move on at this time. Clearly, since then I can see I made a mistake but at the time I didn't fully know what to do. Raising him as a single parent has never been easy and although I feel that most of the time we can figure out a solution to any problem we have, sometimes it's hard to truly know what to do. As his behavior declined more, I had begun to worry, as depression is something that runs in our family with my mother having it later in life especially as her Alzheimer's progressed and me having suffered from it on and off since my wife's passing in 2005. With the pandemic being something no one had answers for, myself included, it's hard to make a call of what to do. At this time basically his only opportunity to leave the house was work which he said he decided that he was gonna work a little more so he can save to get further ahead if classes resume in person sooner than expected and he needed the money. I hoped for the best, but wanted to let him come to me when he felt he needed help.

This finally happened a couple months into the school year and spoke to the idea that he wanted to defer until next year. He seemed overwhelmed, though I did say ??you have to make a final choice?, I would have strongly preferred him to continue with his year. At the time I didn't know how badly things were going for him, I know how hard it can be to go back to school if you've taken time away. Though I went to college at St. Lawrence, from health concerns I had to take a year off, so speaking from experience it's truly a challenge to pull yourself to go back especially if you're working and making good money. For me it added to my stance as when I was his age I had the marks to go to university and do something more than I ended up doing with my career, but my father was a mechanic with his own garage and it was the easy way out for me, and that's not what I wanted Logan to do, I wanted him to try and push and make sure he got his further education. We had a long conversation as I told him what I thought and my hopes and though I could see he was troubled in general, not to mention by the decision he had to make, I felt he needed some time. And even though I didn't think about it hard enough at the time, everything I laid out was an extremely large amount of pressure on him. Combined with him, as mentioned, being the first member of both my late wife and my family to go to university, It was no doubt a tough situation. He didn't speak to me as directly about it from there, but his behavior remained more of the same and though he did express to me that things aren't going the best and the online experience was hard to deal with, he continued to keep to himself and worry me on some level. It was obvious at this point that he had trouble talking about the subject.

As the school year finished and Covid restriction lightened he seemed to be doing much better. He threw himself back into work and the time outside very clearly helped him but he still seemed to be unsure of what was to happen going forward. This culminated in him talking with me recently about his appeal and all he went through and the mental health problems he had much like I expected but had hoped were not the case. As you may imagine this whole situation was a lot to take in but I want my son to do what he feels is best and if he still wants to try and continue with his education I want to help in anyway possible and demonstrate to you what he said is true and the problems he had and the mistakes he made were not normal from him. Anything you need from this point please ask and I can answer any more question you'd like, just anything that can help the situation don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks.

Leonard P. Tremblay