Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Bénard

My name is Alyssa McCulloch and I am a second year student. I am appealing the decision made by Professor Sidney-eve Matrix for not accepting my Infographic assignment in her FILM 240 Fall 2015 course.

The infographic for Professor Matrix¿¿s Fall Film 240 class was due on November 12th, 2015. Because I experienced technical difficulties during the submission period I emailed the final copy of my assignment to Professor Matrix before the deadline. I included screenshots of the webpage of my attempt to upload the assignment to Moodle on two separate computers. An hour after the deadline passed, I was finally able to upload it on Moodle. In short, Moodle prevented me from uploading my document and this resulted in a failing grade. In the email the attached screenshots clearly demonstrated my experience.

Because I did not hear back from Professor Matrix for seven days, I sent her another email. I put a large effort into completing this assignment to the best of my abilities, so naturally, I wanted to follow up with her. She finally replied with an impersonal response saying: ¿¿If your infographic was successfully submitted via Moodle prior to the cut-off it will be graded. Submissions are not accepted via email¿ Unfortunately late work is not accepted in FILM240. This is all spelled out on the course outline, please take a look. SEM¿. Considering this, I attempted to informally resolve this misunderstanding by scheduling an appointment during her office hours to discuss the assignment. During this meeting she restated that she does not take assignments past the deadline and cannot accept an email submission. Professor Matrix said that if she were to make an exception for me it would set a precedent for other students, causing her to have to go back and re-grade a lot of assignments. She stated that she must adhere to her syllabus and the thought of helping one student and not her others would cause many ¿¿sleepless nights¿. This response was surprising because my friend submitted an assignment 10 minutes after the deadline and received a grade. Is this fair considering her strict insistence on not accepting late assignments It seems like a precedent was already set. I made it known that my friend is more than willing to provide evidence of her late submission yet graded assignment if need be. Professor Matrix then said it was only ten minutes late and if it were any more than 15 minutes she would not have accepted it. She said it would be hard to argue that she deducted 20 from a student¿¿s final grade for a submission only a few minutes late. Nevertheless, ten minutes is still ¿¿late¿ according to her syllabus. So it appears that Professor Matrix¿¿s statement goes against what she had told me a few minutes prior. I find the fact that she accepted a late assignment from another student without penalty, but gave me an F/0 on my early assignment by email to be unfair, How is it that she is able to go beyond her syllabus for one student but not another

Additionally, since the exam was canceled due to technically difficulties, I am now in jeopardy of failing her class. I am a second year student who is undeclared. With my academic standing, failing this class may put my on academic probation and thus I will not be able to declare my major until the end of third year. Professor Matrix would not grade my assignment because she did not feel the Moodle failure was a reasonable excuse. However, ironically, she is asking her students to accept a technological error that resulted in much grief for a number of students.

In the future I will submit my assignments at least a day in advance so I will have time to address IT services or the professor if anything happens. I will also make an appointment with an academic advisor to help me figure out a future plan for my degree given my current circumstances. I will also contact disability services and see if there is anything we can add to my existing accommodation letter to help me avoid stressful situations and provide coping mechanisms throughout my university experience.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my appeal,
Alyssa McCulloch