Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Appeals Officer,

My name is Kevin Liu and I am heading into my third year of life sciences here at Queen¿¿s University in Kingston, Ontario. I am writing to you in the hopes of asking for CR standing in one of my courses: PHGY 214. I realize that the 21-day deadline period from when this grade was inputted has passed but due to some circumstances that were hindering my decision to appeal this course, I was unable to submit my appeal within that time frame.

I am not really quite sure where to start but I will begin with some problems that have made the past school year particularly harsh and difficult on my family and own personal well-being. In October, my grandfather passed away back in China. I was deeply lost and hurt when this happened. I was so very close to him and he raised me from when I was born to when I was about 3 years old since my parents had left when I was born to immigrate here to Canada. I was so deeply grateful to him for all he had done and sacrificed to ensure I had a better life. Our family back in China came from farming roots and back then we were extremely poor. My parents saw the opportunity for a better life here in Canada and my Grandfather did everything he could to help them financially to come here. I could not function for weeks after learning of his passing as he meant so much to me and my family. This incident greatly affected my personal health and well-being. Then, before I had even recovered from losing my grandfather, I was told we lost my uncle¿¿s family in china to a car accident. I lost my uncle, aunt and two cousins in the accident. In a matter of two months we had lost 5 family members. I did not know how to cope and for the next month I could not focus or devote enough time or energy to anything else. Our family did not get to have a peaceful or relaxing Christmas vacation and my parents returned to China for a while to assist the family in funeral preparations.

We had recovered a bit around January and our family had settled funeral arrangements and legal documentations. I was able to say goodbye to relatives that meant so much to me and I looked at life with a new outlook that I would work hard for them so that they could look down on me and be proud that I had made our family proud. It was not to be and in early March we learned that my grandmother¿¿s little brother had terminal cancer. Within four days of learning of this news, he passed away leaving us short another member of the family. I was completely broken by now and I just didn¿¿t know what to do. My academics took a turn for the worse, previous school organizations and commitments completely stopped, I locked myself inside my own world and felt so lost. I am not one to seek out help in times like these and I never managed to get myself to approach the school¿¿s wellness center. We fought through as a family and never like sharing our grievances with others.

Thus looking back on my academics this year, it has been a complete failure based on my own standards for myself. I would like to ask to have PHGY 214 counted as a CR standing so that it will not negatively affect my GPA.

In terms of my breaking of the 21-day deadline to submit this appeal, I was under investigation for another course in regards to academic integrity and because of some of the sever personal circumstances, the investigation dragged on for a long time into mid-June. My performances in all of my courses were kind of tied into this investigation at the same time since I had brought up a desire to appeal some of the courses and spoken with Dean Benard about these. Throughout this time, I was severely under informed of some of the things that I could do to minimize the harm of my situation and had to take time to consult with academic advisors, Katie Phillips ¿¿ who is the assistant to Dean Benard of Arts and Science, figure out how to best settle my other courses which had also been impacted, deal with the tail end of my family issues and determine the next steps in regards to minimizing the damage to my academic career. On top of that, I was also putting a lot of effort into summer research and two summer courses, PSYC 100 and LAW 201. Thus, I would like to ask if you would be so kind to waive the 21-day deadline and process my appeal as I have now had time to gather enough information on the best course of action, have spoken with academic advising and my wellness center counselor and other members of my support system, taken time to reflect on what each outlet/decision could mean and finalized on what I plan to do.

My family matters have really been detrimental for me this past year and I have taken time to begin recovery and move forward from this. I have been using these experiences as a step in my mental recovery in order to make sure that my family¿¿s aspirations for me have not been wasted and use this as a stepping stone towards a better future.

Best wishes and thank you very much for your consideration.

Kevin Liu
10147314