Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dr Johanne Benard
Associate Dean (Studies)
Student Services
First Floor Dunning Hall
Queen¿¿s University
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6

Dear Dr. Benard,

I wish to appeal my grade in French 107 in the fall term of 2015. I have completed my necessary course work for my degree as of December 2015, and I am currently being considered for a highly competitive Master¿¿s Program in Social Work and this grade¿¿s impact on my GPA will likely take me out of consideration.

In the summer prior to the fall 2015 semester I had a number of highly stressful events occur- my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time in three years, I worked a high stress job in Ottawa as an Assistant Probation Officer where I had a client of probation threaten to kill me, and I had a bad fall from my horse where I tore my meniscus, leaving me unable to fully engage in physical activities, which I have always used as a way to de-stress. As a result, when I moved back to Kingston in September I was still feeling a great deal of stress, and was struggling to focus on schoolwork. I have attached a letter of attendance from a counsellor stating that I was seeing him throughout the fall due to stress and anxiety.

When final grades were released on Solus I was very surprised to find that I had received a D+ for French 107. I immediately contacted Dr. Dhavernas, as I believed this was an error (I had received high grades on all components of the course). After several emails and phone calls to Dr. Dhavernas as well as an IT staff, I discovered that I had completed the wrong set of exercises on Rosetta Stone, causing me to fail the Tell Me More component of the course which was worth 30 of my final grade. I asked Dr. Dhavernas if there was any way for me to complete the work I had missed, but she declined this request.

After realizing that I had completed the wrong modules on Rosetta Stone I went back on the site to try to find the correct units, and found that they were not even labelled with the correct course code (they were still labeled as P17 rather than 107). I also feel that when a student with strong grades is consistently not completing the correct module, each and every week, there should be a mechanism in place to ask the student why prior to the end of the term so the student can correct the error. I in no way did this on purpose, I have never done anything like this before, and I am embarrassed that I could do such a thing. Since I have never done anything like this and always done my assignments exactly as asked, I feel that the amount of stress I was under in September affected my ability to focus well and comprehend the instructions presented in FREN 107.

As a student who has completed all of the course work for my degree, and consistently receives grades in the A and B range, I do not feel that this D reflects my ability, or the effort that I have put into this course (I did spend hours each week working on the wrong Rosetta Stone exercises). Throughout my undergraduate degree I have been working hard on maintaining a good GPA, as well as gaining work and volunteer experience that is required to be accepted into a Masters of Social Work program, and having a D on my transcript for this course will take me out of consideration as a competitive candidate. As a result, I am asking that this D+ on my transcript be removed, as it will negatively impact my attempts at moving forward with my education at the graduate level.

Moving forward I do not believe that I will have any further issues- my mother is doing well, my knee is nearly healed, and I have been able to discuss the incident with my probation client with a professional counsellor who has experience working in the corrections system. Additionally I have worked with a counsellor to learn various ways to deal with stress should it reoccur at such a high level. Moving forwards I do feel confident that I would be able to successfully move forward to complete a Masters program.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Alicia Clark