Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

I am requesting to waive the One-Term Appeal Deadline for consideration of writing the ECON 243 final exam in the Winter 2018 semester. During the Winter 2017 semester I had taken ECON 243 and chose to inquire about deferring the exam for a couple weeks after my Aunt had become very sick. Professor Berkok granted my request, but unfortunately a few days after making these arrangements my family received news that my Aunt had late stage terminal lung cancer that had spread throughout her body, and we had a month at most with her. This was quite devastating to my family, as my Aunt was very involved in our lives. Upon relaying this information to Professor Berkok, we arranged for me to write my ECON 243 exam at the end of the summer, a couple of weeks before the fall term began. My Aunt ended up passing away a month later on June 2nd. Another serious health issue arose in the beginning of August, this time with my grandmother. We were told she was having respiratory issues and she unfortunately passed away a couple weeks later on August 14th. I reached out to Professor Berkok, and spoke with him regarding the events that had transpired over the summer, and how I did not feel that I was mentally prepared to write the exam. I had brought up the idea of using work completed to calculate my final grade, but the exam was heavily weighted so this was impossible. Professor Berkok then suggested I audit the course in the upcoming winter semester, and write the final then. I agreed to this, thinking I would just informally attend the class, and after writing the final, submit a grade change form. Last week I emailed Professor Berkok, wondering about gaining access to the course webpage, as I noticed some of this years material in class had been updated. He responded to me, and asked me to contact Jennine Ball regarding the procedure of validating a student auditing a course and taking the exam. I was unaware that there was any steps that needed to be taken on my part previous to this email, in the conversation before this I was just told to audit the course and take the final. Jennine Ball informed me that this was not a standard procedure for auditing a course, and asked me to write an appeal. I am intending to appeal to write the ECON 243 final this semester, should this request to waive the One-Term appeal deadline be granted.


Matheson Goff