Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

Growing up in a neighbourhood where I was one of the only jewish individuals at my elementary school/high school took a toll on me mentally. I always felt it was forced upon my own identity to lie to my peers about being jewish. I would hide my true self just to feel like I could fit in with my peers. I consistently felt like an outlier. I have dealt with some anti semitic comments over the course of my educational career. Comments like these at a young age played a significant role in growing my insecurity of my identity. This also played a role in becoming a very anxious person, one of which I have been prescribed for.

During my first year of studies at Queen’s, I started to meet other jewish individuals. One particular individual, who was born in Israel, became one of my close friends that I have here at Queen’s. I then slowly started to gain confidence in my identity and this friend informed me of a Hebrew class (HEBR 190) that he wanted me to try as an elective during this fall semester. Growing up in the area I did, I’m not familiar with Hebrew at all. However, as I was slowly growing confidence with my true self, I wanted to gain experience with Hebrew and learn more about my culture. I was finally coming out of my shell. Unfortunately because of the involvement I lacked with the language, the course was too much for my inexperience. I had to make the executive decision to switch courses and find a new elective. I was disappointed in myself because now I felt as if I was an outlier with my own culture. This was hard on me mentally but I had to change electives. I felt lost choosing electives but I later joined CLST 102 right before the fall reading week. This is where everything changed again. During reading week, the news about the war in Israel was a huge insensitive topic for me. With friends who have family living there and acquaintances of mine, it was tough to hold a grasp of reality. Immediately my mental state changed back to how it was during elementary and high school on campus. Since then, on campus I’ve had mental issues with being afraid whenever I leave my house. All my classes are in Goodes Hall, however CLST 102 is in the Bioscience Complex which is a far walk for me. The walk to class to Bioscience is extraordinarily fearful for me because of what is going on in the world right now. This has caused me to miss multiple lectures in CLST 102 because I fear something will happen walking all the way down to the far side of campus. Missing lectures in CLST 102, worrying about issues that could potentially happen on campus, and thinking about the current situation in Israel has affected my academic performance. I realized that the deadline to drop classes was on October 30th, but being the shy/scared individual I grew up as, I decided to stick with my elective and not speak up. However, I finally gained the courage to write this letter as I have realized that my ability to study the work in this course was completely affected by the current situation at hand. These past weeks I have felt as if I have entered back into my shell from my childhood about my own identity. I hope to drop CLST 102 from my current load of courses to better prioritize my current mental state.

Thank you for taking this into consideration,
Sincerely,
Joshua Arbuckle