Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am writing this letter today to dispute a grade I received in one of my winter term classes, PHIL 270. In summary, I was forced to miss a course component due to illness and was not provided an opportunity to make this component up or have the course component re-weighted. I have included the course syllabus as part of this submission.

This class had five in-person reading questions throughout the term. The dates for these were selected at random and were not given to students ahead of time. These were held in person and you had to be present in class when it was announced in order to write them.

On March 11th, I was struck with an illness which prevented me from making it to my class on that day (as well as all other courses). Knowing the possibility of there being a reading question, I emailed my course instructor, Dr. Nancy Salay to inform her that I was ill and unable to attend lectures on that day. At that time, I also requested accommodation in the event that a reading question was given out. Unfortunately, there was in fact a reading question on March 11 and yet no offer for any type of accommodation was given.

Following the release of final grades, I reached out to Dr. Salay as the missed question (and the corresponding 5%) was never accounted for. I attempted to reach out to Dr. Nancy Salay and the TA Stephen Berry to see if anything could be done about this but received no accommodation of the fact that I was ill on March 11th.

I am hoping that an adjustment could be made to my final grade given that I never received accommodation for my absence due to illness on March 11.

Sincerely yours,

Rian Corrigan