Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Horton,

This is my formal request to drop POLS 110 after the last official date. In your correspondence with the board of studies, you note that the board is ineligible to make a judgment with consideration of my POLS110 failing grade as a result of the matter not being put forward to the Associate Dean of Studies. Please consider the factors in which I have chosen to make this appeal.

1. Listed on the Faculty of Arts and Science Guideline page includes the following reason for which a student might be entitled to have a course dropped after the last official date. It is as follows: ¿¿YES You are in university for the first time and have not received any type of verbal or written feedback concerning your performance in the course prior to the drop deadline.¿ Had I have known that my academic performance was suffering; I would most definitely have dropped the course long before the required date. I was simply unaware of how my performance was in the course and therefore unable to make a value judgment as to whether or not to drop the course before the academic deadline.

2. Since POLS110 is a full year (two semester course), there was a change in professors. Dr. Jonathon Rose taught the course for the first semester. Taking his place in January 2013 was Dr. Kim Richard Nossal. Professor Rose made excellent use of the online learning system that Queen¿¿s University has in place called Moodle. On the Moodle page, students can look up their current grades, find contact information for TA¿¿s and the professor, and find helpful links uploaded by Professor Rose. Unfortunately, once Dr. Nossal began teaching the course, the Moodle page was taken down and he did not make use of the Moodle page, rendering myself to be unable to keep a close watch on my current marks. If the Moodle page had remained in place throughout the year, I would have been able to keep a close eye on my marks and decided that it would be in my best interest to drop the course before the academic deadline.

3. I took POLS110 in first year, and was new to university. In high school, teachers often warn students if academic performance falls below a certain threshold. Being a new university student, the lack of communication from the faculty (compounded with the first two points) resulted in my lack of judgment in remaining in the course even though failure was likely to be the case. In no case did the faculty or a TA, make any kind of contact with me with regards to my performance.

4. As you know, this matter is part of a wider appeal intended to allow me to remain at Queen¿¿s in 2014/2015 academic year. If I am permitted to drop POLS 110 and GHPY 102, my GPA will be above 1.60 and accordingly, this appeal is critical to me. This is also the reason why I am requesting the ability to have this matter considered outside of the 21 day period.

Thank you for considering these four elements that resulted in my inability to drop the course after the last official date. These four points are consistent with the Faculty of Arts and Science guideline for an effective appeal to drop after the last official date.

Yours very truly,

Andrew Clark