Manage Appeals
Petition Type: New
ID: 14327
Submitted: May 13, 2026 at 6:12:25 PM
First Name: Leah
Last Name: Yamniuk
Pronoun: She/Her
Student Number: 20479293
Email: 23jq44@queensu.ca
Degree Program: BAH
Plan: PSYC
Level of Study: 3
Petition Categories
Petition Categories: Waive the 21-day or one term deadline
Petition Letter
Petition Letter: To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing to respectfully petition for a second deferral of my PSYC 203 final examination.
At the end of the Winter 2026 term, I experienced a sudden illness that required hospitalization during the scheduled examination period. As a result, I was unable to complete the exam at its originally scheduled time. I submitted a petition for a deferred examination along with supporting medical documentation, and that request was approved.
The deferred examination was scheduled during the deferred examination period. However, I currently reside in Vancouver, British Columbia and due to the timing and logistical constraints associated with travelling, I am unfortunately unable to travel to Kingston, Ontario, during the deferred examination period.
I am requesting permission to write the examination during the second deferred examination period at the end of August, when I will be returning to Ontario and will be able to attend in person. My inability to attend the May deferred examination period is directly related to the circumstances surrounding my original illness and the resulting disruption to my academic schedule.
Since the incident, I have taken appropriate steps to address my health and ensure that I will be able to complete the examination successfully during the August deferred period. I am committed to completing the course requirements and appreciate your consideration of this request.
Thank you very much for your time and understanding.
Sincerely,
Leah Yamniuk
20479293
I am writing to respectfully petition for a second deferral of my PSYC 203 final examination.
At the end of the Winter 2026 term, I experienced a sudden illness that required hospitalization during the scheduled examination period. As a result, I was unable to complete the exam at its originally scheduled time. I submitted a petition for a deferred examination along with supporting medical documentation, and that request was approved.
The deferred examination was scheduled during the deferred examination period. However, I currently reside in Vancouver, British Columbia and due to the timing and logistical constraints associated with travelling, I am unfortunately unable to travel to Kingston, Ontario, during the deferred examination period.
I am requesting permission to write the examination during the second deferred examination period at the end of August, when I will be returning to Ontario and will be able to attend in person. My inability to attend the May deferred examination period is directly related to the circumstances surrounding my original illness and the resulting disruption to my academic schedule.
Since the incident, I have taken appropriate steps to address my health and ensure that I will be able to complete the examination successfully during the August deferred period. I am committed to completing the course requirements and appreciate your consideration of this request.
Thank you very much for your time and understanding.
Sincerely,
Leah Yamniuk
20479293
Documentation
Professional Letter: DoctorsNote41726.pdf
Decision Letters
Level 1 Status
Status: DeniedLevel 2
Appeal Type: Level 2
ID: 371
Submitted: July 5, 2026 at 1:51:19 PM
Relevant Petition: 14327
Decision(s) Being Appealed: Waive the 21-day or one term deadline
Appeal Grounds
Appeals to the Board of Studies must include a letter based on one or more of the Grounds for Appeal (Appeal Regulation 3.4). What are the grounds you are basing your appeal on?
- The Associate Dean's decision did not follow the rules of procedural fairness. A breach of procedural fairness includes such things as the Associate Dean failed to:
- Make a reasonable decision in your appeal. A “reasonable” decision is one that is based on evidence, thought out and supported by facts and logical inferences from the facts. To be reasonable, the decision must contain adequate reasons for the conclusions.
Appeal Grounds Details: Dear Members of the Board of Studies.
I've provided details of my grounds for appeal in my appeal letter (attached). I've also provided several additional supporting documents. Note that the system was not permitting me to upload all of my attachments, so I generated a single PDF file that contains all the documents together, and this is the file that I have uploaded for your review.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
-Leah Yamniuk
I've provided details of my grounds for appeal in my appeal letter (attached). I've also provided several additional supporting documents. Note that the system was not permitting me to upload all of my attachments, so I generated a single PDF file that contains all the documents together, and this is the file that I have uploaded for your review.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
-Leah Yamniuk
Appeal Letter
Appeal Letter: Below is the Appeal Letter text, copied from the attached Appeal Letter (PDF) document:
------------------------------
RE: Academic Appeal – Leah Yamniuk, (Student ID: 20479293)
Dear Chair and Members of the Board of Studies,
Please accept this letter and the accompanying documents as my Level 2 appeal for Exam Deferral in PSYC 203 (W26). My Level 1 appeal submission number is 14327 for your reference.
My initial exam deferral request was due to a sudden and severe illness which required hospitalization (see attached file “Leah Yamniuk - hospital doctor illness note, April, 2026”). We have since learned that this may have been caused by exposure to the parasite cryptosporidium (see attached CBC news article). At the time, I had correspondence with Queen's Student Accessibility Services (QSAS), then with my professor Dr. Daryl Wilson, who referred me to Tara Karasewich (Accommodations and Learning Management Systems Assistant), and then ultimately with the Queen’s Academic Consideration Team. All of these communications are attached as PDF files for your reference.
I am submitting this Level 2 appeal as a formal request to have the Associate Dean’s decision to deny my previous petition reviewed. I believe I have grounds to appeal the previous decision as per the guidelines provided in Section 2.1 of the Academic Petitions and Appeals Regulations website, at: https://www.queensu.ca/academic-calendar/arts-science/appeal-regulations/
Specifically, the June 23, 2026 Appeal Decision email (see email #6 attached) indicated that my previous request did not demonstrate extenuating circumstances and/or include documentation confirming that such circumstances affected my ability to write the deferred exam on May 20, 2026. As such, I have provided such additional documentation in this Level 2 appeal, as outlined below.
On May 8th, 2026 I received notification that my deferred exam date would be on May 20, 2026 @ 9:00am (see attached email #4). By this time I was already scheduled to work at my summer job at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver throughout those dates in May, including working on May 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 19, 20, and 21. I’ve provided images from my Dayforce scheduling app as documentation to support my work on these dates (see attached documents). Being new to this position/department this summer, I believe my employment would have been put at risk if I were to have missed shifts to fly back to Kingston for this exam.
The unexpected war in Iran this year sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing to their highest levels in the past 4 years, and airlines passed the higher fuel prices on to their customers. This made the cost of the 5 hour flight from Vancouver to Kingston, plus 3.0 hour bus ride highly prohibitive. I could not find specific data on the cost of flights during this time, but Gemini-AI provided an estimate of close to $1,000 for me to make this trip, potentially even higher to try to book the flight to be in Kingston for the specific date of May 20th. In liu of confirmed data on the flight prices, I’ve provided an image of crude oil prices over the past year for your reference, showing the huge spike in price between March and the end of June 2026.
In her email on Thu 4/16/2026 at 10:12 AM, Tara Karasewich (Accommodations and Learning Management Systems Assistant) stated that “most students submit a second deferral petition close to the deferred period (in May)” (see attached email #2), and then in Tara’s email on Thu 4/16/2026 at 12:01 PM she indicated that “a second deferral – if granted, that would allow us to make arrangements for you to write at the end of the Summer term (just before the start of the Fall term)”. These emails indicating that “most” students submit a second deferral request, and stating the specific timeline of “end of the Summer term” suggested to my parents and I that deferring an exam to the end of Summer was common practice at Queen’s University. Our interpretation of Tara’s emails, together with our reading about “reasonable” and “extenuating circumstances” definitions on the Queen’s University website led my parents and I to conclude that my original illness (for which I provided the doctor note from my hospital visit - see attached file “Leah Yamniuk - hospital doctor illness note, April, 2026”) would qualify as an extenuating circumstance, and also that it was unreasonable to expect me to pay for an additional trip from Vancouver to Kingston to take a deferred exam in May when flight prices were at multi-year highs due to the war in Iran, and causing me to miss multiple days of my summer job, when it was common for students to defer their exam to the end of the summer.
I hope that you will find the justification and supporting documentation outlined above as suitable support for my Level 2 appeal. Please let me know if you require clarification or additional supporting information for any of the above items.
In addition, to the above documentation I would ask that you please consider my overall GPA and commitment to the faculty, the University, and to the Kingston community, when making your decision. I am an extremely hard working and dedicated student, working toward a BA Honours degree with a Psychology Specialization, with plans to become a Clinical Psychologist. My current GPA without the PSYC 203 grade would be ~3.63, and prior to the final exam my grade in the PSYC 203 course would have been at least 83% (A-) for me to have received on overall grade of D- including 0% on the final exam (which was worth 40% according to the syllabus). I am highly active in the Queen’s community, including being a Research Assistant at the Queen's University Sexual Health Research Lab (SHRL), and Volunteering at the Queen’s Sexual Health Resource Centre (SHRC). I am also the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Indigeneity (EDII) Director for the Queen's Emerging Markets Conference (QEMC), and have been an active volunteer in the Kingston community, for example, assisting adults with special needs as a volunteer through the Best Buddies International program. I am also taking part in the Queen’s exchange program next year, spending February through June 2027 at the University of Graz in Austria. My grades are very important to me as I plan to go to graduate school to support my long term career goals, and needing to re-take the PSYC 203 course would delay my graduation and significantly impact my future plans.
Lastly, I would like to add that if deferring the PSYC 203 exam to the end of August is not an option, I would also be prepared to take my grade for this course with the omission of the final exam, if that is an option. As mentioned above, I believe my grade in PSYC 203 prior to the final exam was in line with my overall GPA (approximately an A-).
Thank you again for your time and consideration.
Respectfully,
Leah Yamniuk
List of documents attached:
Leah Yamniuk level 2 appeal letter_July3,2026
Leah Yamniuk - hospital doctor illness note, April, 2026
Leah Yamniuk email 1, April 16, 2026 - notification of illness
Leah Yamniuk email 2, April 16, 2026 - recommendation to defer
Leah Yamniuk email 3, April 16, 2026 - confirmation of deferral request
Leah Yamniuk email 4, May 8, 2026 - deferred exame information
Leah Yamniuk email 5, May 13, 2026 - confirmation of petition received
Leah Yamniuk email 6, June 23, 2026 - appeal decision 1
Leah Yamniuk - work schedule image 1
Leah Yamniuk - work schedule image 2
Leah Yamniuk - work schedule image 3
Leah Yamniuk - work schedule image 4
Parasitic illness sickens dozens in Kingston area _ CBC News
Crude oil prices, July 2025 - July 2026
------------------------------
RE: Academic Appeal – Leah Yamniuk, (Student ID: 20479293)
Dear Chair and Members of the Board of Studies,
Please accept this letter and the accompanying documents as my Level 2 appeal for Exam Deferral in PSYC 203 (W26). My Level 1 appeal submission number is 14327 for your reference.
My initial exam deferral request was due to a sudden and severe illness which required hospitalization (see attached file “Leah Yamniuk - hospital doctor illness note, April, 2026”). We have since learned that this may have been caused by exposure to the parasite cryptosporidium (see attached CBC news article). At the time, I had correspondence with Queen's Student Accessibility Services (QSAS), then with my professor Dr. Daryl Wilson, who referred me to Tara Karasewich (Accommodations and Learning Management Systems Assistant), and then ultimately with the Queen’s Academic Consideration Team. All of these communications are attached as PDF files for your reference.
I am submitting this Level 2 appeal as a formal request to have the Associate Dean’s decision to deny my previous petition reviewed. I believe I have grounds to appeal the previous decision as per the guidelines provided in Section 2.1 of the Academic Petitions and Appeals Regulations website, at: https://www.queensu.ca/academic-calendar/arts-science/appeal-regulations/
Specifically, the June 23, 2026 Appeal Decision email (see email #6 attached) indicated that my previous request did not demonstrate extenuating circumstances and/or include documentation confirming that such circumstances affected my ability to write the deferred exam on May 20, 2026. As such, I have provided such additional documentation in this Level 2 appeal, as outlined below.
On May 8th, 2026 I received notification that my deferred exam date would be on May 20, 2026 @ 9:00am (see attached email #4). By this time I was already scheduled to work at my summer job at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver throughout those dates in May, including working on May 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 19, 20, and 21. I’ve provided images from my Dayforce scheduling app as documentation to support my work on these dates (see attached documents). Being new to this position/department this summer, I believe my employment would have been put at risk if I were to have missed shifts to fly back to Kingston for this exam.
The unexpected war in Iran this year sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing to their highest levels in the past 4 years, and airlines passed the higher fuel prices on to their customers. This made the cost of the 5 hour flight from Vancouver to Kingston, plus 3.0 hour bus ride highly prohibitive. I could not find specific data on the cost of flights during this time, but Gemini-AI provided an estimate of close to $1,000 for me to make this trip, potentially even higher to try to book the flight to be in Kingston for the specific date of May 20th. In liu of confirmed data on the flight prices, I’ve provided an image of crude oil prices over the past year for your reference, showing the huge spike in price between March and the end of June 2026.
In her email on Thu 4/16/2026 at 10:12 AM, Tara Karasewich (Accommodations and Learning Management Systems Assistant) stated that “most students submit a second deferral petition close to the deferred period (in May)” (see attached email #2), and then in Tara’s email on Thu 4/16/2026 at 12:01 PM she indicated that “a second deferral – if granted, that would allow us to make arrangements for you to write at the end of the Summer term (just before the start of the Fall term)”. These emails indicating that “most” students submit a second deferral request, and stating the specific timeline of “end of the Summer term” suggested to my parents and I that deferring an exam to the end of Summer was common practice at Queen’s University. Our interpretation of Tara’s emails, together with our reading about “reasonable” and “extenuating circumstances” definitions on the Queen’s University website led my parents and I to conclude that my original illness (for which I provided the doctor note from my hospital visit - see attached file “Leah Yamniuk - hospital doctor illness note, April, 2026”) would qualify as an extenuating circumstance, and also that it was unreasonable to expect me to pay for an additional trip from Vancouver to Kingston to take a deferred exam in May when flight prices were at multi-year highs due to the war in Iran, and causing me to miss multiple days of my summer job, when it was common for students to defer their exam to the end of the summer.
I hope that you will find the justification and supporting documentation outlined above as suitable support for my Level 2 appeal. Please let me know if you require clarification or additional supporting information for any of the above items.
In addition, to the above documentation I would ask that you please consider my overall GPA and commitment to the faculty, the University, and to the Kingston community, when making your decision. I am an extremely hard working and dedicated student, working toward a BA Honours degree with a Psychology Specialization, with plans to become a Clinical Psychologist. My current GPA without the PSYC 203 grade would be ~3.63, and prior to the final exam my grade in the PSYC 203 course would have been at least 83% (A-) for me to have received on overall grade of D- including 0% on the final exam (which was worth 40% according to the syllabus). I am highly active in the Queen’s community, including being a Research Assistant at the Queen's University Sexual Health Research Lab (SHRL), and Volunteering at the Queen’s Sexual Health Resource Centre (SHRC). I am also the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Indigeneity (EDII) Director for the Queen's Emerging Markets Conference (QEMC), and have been an active volunteer in the Kingston community, for example, assisting adults with special needs as a volunteer through the Best Buddies International program. I am also taking part in the Queen’s exchange program next year, spending February through June 2027 at the University of Graz in Austria. My grades are very important to me as I plan to go to graduate school to support my long term career goals, and needing to re-take the PSYC 203 course would delay my graduation and significantly impact my future plans.
Lastly, I would like to add that if deferring the PSYC 203 exam to the end of August is not an option, I would also be prepared to take my grade for this course with the omission of the final exam, if that is an option. As mentioned above, I believe my grade in PSYC 203 prior to the final exam was in line with my overall GPA (approximately an A-).
Thank you again for your time and consideration.
Respectfully,
Leah Yamniuk
List of documents attached:
Leah Yamniuk level 2 appeal letter_July3,2026
Leah Yamniuk - hospital doctor illness note, April, 2026
Leah Yamniuk email 1, April 16, 2026 - notification of illness
Leah Yamniuk email 2, April 16, 2026 - recommendation to defer
Leah Yamniuk email 3, April 16, 2026 - confirmation of deferral request
Leah Yamniuk email 4, May 8, 2026 - deferred exame information
Leah Yamniuk email 5, May 13, 2026 - confirmation of petition received
Leah Yamniuk email 6, June 23, 2026 - appeal decision 1
Leah Yamniuk - work schedule image 1
Leah Yamniuk - work schedule image 2
Leah Yamniuk - work schedule image 3
Leah Yamniuk - work schedule image 4
Parasitic illness sickens dozens in Kingston area _ CBC News
Crude oil prices, July 2025 - July 2026
Documentation
History
Originally submitted May 13, 2026 at 6:12:25 PM.
| Field | Reference | Old Value | New Value | Note | User | Date/Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| status | N/A | Received | Incomplete | Sandra Irvine | 2026-05-26 3:49:21 PM | |
| status | N/A | Incomplete | In Review | Kerri Andrews | 2026-06-02 5:36:00 PM | |
| status | N/A | In Review | Denied | Kerri Andrews | 2026-06-23 10:16:53 AM | |
| associate_dean | N/A | Dorit Naaman (Associate Dean Academic) | Kerri Andrews | 2026-06-23 10:16:53 AM | ||
| decision_letter | N/A | N/A | Decision letter sent | Kerri Andrews | 2026-06-23 10:17:27 AM | |
| new_appeal_level_2 | N/A | Level 2 | Level 2 Appeal ID: 371 | 23jq44 | 2026-07-05 1:51:19 PM | |
| status | N/A | Received | In Review | Kathrine Scott | 2026-07-09 10:57:55 AM |