Petition Letter
I am submitting an academic appeal requesting to have a grade removed from my transcript. The course I am referring to is Introduction to Statistics, with the corresponding course code ¿¿STAT 263¿. I took this course in the 2020 winter semester, and finished the course with a failing grade. My request to remove this F from my transcript is based on a tragic circumstance I experienced, which I believe negatively impacted my academic studies, and my overall performance for this class. The course had a final exam, and in April, due to a short-term sickness, I was able to defer the exam, which was then scheduled for September 10. I had a lot of time before the deferred final, roughly 4 months, and I was well prepared for the final, especially with the additional time I had to review the course content.
At the beginning of September, with less than a week before my final, my family and I received devastating news that a very close friend of ours had passed away. This is the first time I experienced the passing of someone close, and was very hard on myself and my family. Because this was my first experience with death, it made the situation much harder to deal with. Seeing my parents in such a saddening mood, alongside the family of the deceased impacted me, and I was not in the right mind for any coursework, I was even considering taking the semester off (given we had the choice not to take any classes for the fall semester due to the pandemic situation), but eventually decided not to. Given this situation, I also had to complete the final exam for my statistics class, and I did not want to submit another request to differ given I had already done so for the first final, and I was also well prepared for it. However, in the days leading up to the final, as my family and I continued to visit the home of the deceased, this brought me down again and again, and I believe this influenced my performance on the final, which I failed, subsequently, failing the course.
I also communicated with the appeals team, and was told to explain why I am making this request late. After receiving my grade in the class, I was unsure what to do, and came upon the academic appeal process. I had emailed the team at the time, and they told me that this is a process I can pursue. The reason for the lateness of this request is because at first, it was rather difficult to make, and I was not ready yet to write down this explanation. Another reason is that my father had been travelling since October, and came back just at the beginning of December, and given one form of documentation to submit was a death certificate, my father told me to wait until he was back so we could further discuss this. Once he returned, I explained to him that I will be making this request, and that one form of documentation would be a death certificate, however, my father is very much against this, and explained to me that it is not ethical for us to ask their family for the death certificate given our culture (we are middle-eastern), and told me to ask for any alternatives. After talking to the appeals team, they told me they would accept a newspaper article I told them about. Basically, the local news website releases a list of the name of all deaths every day, and I will submit the link of this, alongside the name. Please note that this news article is in arabic, and you will need to use the translate tool on the browser to see it in english, the name is the second on the list, ¿¿Qusay Haddad¿. Link: https://royanews.tv/death/2091
Based on my situation, I am making the request to remove this grade from my transcript because I believe this was out of my hand, and I hope that you can consider my request, and make a fair decision. If this is not enough, I would also like to ask that you also consider the fact that students had the option to pass/fail courses in the winter semester, and although I had differed the exam, it was still a course from the winter semester, however, I hope the explanation of my situation will allow for my appeal to be approved.
At the beginning of September, with less than a week before my final, my family and I received devastating news that a very close friend of ours had passed away. This is the first time I experienced the passing of someone close, and was very hard on myself and my family. Because this was my first experience with death, it made the situation much harder to deal with. Seeing my parents in such a saddening mood, alongside the family of the deceased impacted me, and I was not in the right mind for any coursework, I was even considering taking the semester off (given we had the choice not to take any classes for the fall semester due to the pandemic situation), but eventually decided not to. Given this situation, I also had to complete the final exam for my statistics class, and I did not want to submit another request to differ given I had already done so for the first final, and I was also well prepared for it. However, in the days leading up to the final, as my family and I continued to visit the home of the deceased, this brought me down again and again, and I believe this influenced my performance on the final, which I failed, subsequently, failing the course.
I also communicated with the appeals team, and was told to explain why I am making this request late. After receiving my grade in the class, I was unsure what to do, and came upon the academic appeal process. I had emailed the team at the time, and they told me that this is a process I can pursue. The reason for the lateness of this request is because at first, it was rather difficult to make, and I was not ready yet to write down this explanation. Another reason is that my father had been travelling since October, and came back just at the beginning of December, and given one form of documentation to submit was a death certificate, my father told me to wait until he was back so we could further discuss this. Once he returned, I explained to him that I will be making this request, and that one form of documentation would be a death certificate, however, my father is very much against this, and explained to me that it is not ethical for us to ask their family for the death certificate given our culture (we are middle-eastern), and told me to ask for any alternatives. After talking to the appeals team, they told me they would accept a newspaper article I told them about. Basically, the local news website releases a list of the name of all deaths every day, and I will submit the link of this, alongside the name. Please note that this news article is in arabic, and you will need to use the translate tool on the browser to see it in english, the name is the second on the list, ¿¿Qusay Haddad¿. Link: https://royanews.tv/death/2091
Based on my situation, I am making the request to remove this grade from my transcript because I believe this was out of my hand, and I hope that you can consider my request, and make a fair decision. If this is not enough, I would also like to ask that you also consider the fact that students had the option to pass/fail courses in the winter semester, and although I had differed the exam, it was still a course from the winter semester, however, I hope the explanation of my situation will allow for my appeal to be approved.