Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Kevin Gonthier
Student ID: 20265810

ATTN: Associate Dean (Academic)

I am appealing the Faculty??s regarding an overdue balance of 3,091.55 for the late course drop from summer of 2021 due to extenuating circumstances.


On January 11th, 2022, I received a letter from Queen??s University on my personal email (kevingonthier@outlook.com) about the overdue charge. This was the first communication I received since I withdrew from all my winter 2021 courses. Until that point, I was not aware of any overdue balance nor did I think I was registered for any courses for the summer of 2021.

I would like to give you some information on professional background along with my motivations to take online courses at Queen??s. I believe this will provide more context and will help you better understand my situation. I am a 31 year old airline pilot and I have been working in aviation since I was 19 years old. When COVID-19 hit, I was temporarily laid-off from a major airline in Canada. I initially took online classes for the 2021 winter as I did not know when my airline would call me back to work and wanted to diversify my education and qualifications. When I enrolled with those courses, I was also working a non-aviation related job in order to pay 2 mortgages & other various bills. I quickly realized that completing these courses would be extremely difficult due to the lack of time on my schedule. I then withdrew from the 2021 winter courses before the deadline. At the time, I thought that withdrawing from these courses would automatically withdraw me from classes I had previously selected for the summer of 2021 as many of these courses required pre-requisite courses to be completed prior. My understanding was that I was withdrawn from all courses at Queen??s University. Furthermore, I never logged in to my SOLUS account after withdrawing from the winter 2021 courses. As you can see from my login history, I had no intention in taking any other classes and should I had received notification about these courses that were still on my profile for the summer of 2021, I would have taken prompt actions to avoid the situation we are now facing. I did not receive any notification from Queen??s University until January 11th 2022 regarding any overdue charges on my personal email.

Until my airline calls me back for work, I am now employed by an Air Ambulance working on call 24/7 with several flights overseas through multiple timezones. I would like to apologize for not initiating this appeal earlier this winter when I got the email about the overdue charges, as I have been extremely busy with work. I would kindly ask you to review my case carefully and hopefully we can come to an agreement that it was an honest misunderstanding and miscommunication between both parties.

Kevin Gonthier

+1 514-250-9497
kevingonthier@outlook.com