Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am a first year student in General Arts planning to major in Economics. This past exam period I made the mistake of writing down my CLST 130 exam in my calendar as 7:30pm rather then the scheduled time of 9:00am. This mistake caused me to miss my exam. On the day of the exam, Friday, December 14th, I went onto Solus around 5pm to confirm the room I would be writing in which is when I realized I had already missed the exam time. As you may understand I was extremely upset and embarrassed by the situation. Despite this, I immediately went and talked with my don, Trent Holmes, to explain the situation and get help. He calmed me down and informed me that this is a large university and that this situation is not as uncommon as I might think. He then told me to send my professor, Ann Foley, an email explaining the situation and asking for a possible make up. I was told that it was up to the professors discretion whether I would allowed to rewrite, however, since I was a first year student writing my first set of exams, Trent assured me that he had not heard of a situation in which the professor was not accommodating. At 5:13pm I sent an email to my professor explaining the situation, taking accountability for my mistake and explaining that I had studied really hard for the exam and would really appreciate the opportunity to rewrite it. Since it was a Friday night I understood that the email may not be checked until the Monday. On Saturday morning after not hearing back I decided to send an email to my TA as well, again explaining the situation and asking if there is anything further I could do to help resolve the situation. I also sent an email Saturday night to the student crisis centre asking for any advice on how to handle the situation. Sunday I was scheduled to go home and although I did want to stay and solve the situation, I was also very upset by it and really needed to be at home with my family. They informed me that they could drive me back at anytime to rewrite it so I went back home. I never received a reply from the email to the TA, however, Monday morning at 10:14am I received a response email from my professor. She told me although this was unfortunate there was nothing she could do about it. She said it would be unfair to the class if I was to have more time to study and that I could talk to other students in the class about the questions on the exam (neither which I have done). Although I did understand this concern I sent a response asking if I would be able to rewrite with a penalty or if this was not possible, then potentially doing something else for extra credit so that I would not fail. This email was sent 25 minutes after receiving my professor's response and has gone unanswered. My mother then called the Queen's parents line for help handling the situation. They sent her back two numbers to call, the head of the department and the Dean. As I had wanted to be responsible for dealing with my mistake I called the head of the department of classics, Drew Griffith, again explaining the situation and asking if there was anything he could do. He told me that although he could not force my professor to allow me to rewrite the exam, he may have some influence and would speak with her. That same day around 3:00pm he sent me an email explaining that although he did speak with her he was unable to change her mind. He told me she hoped that this experience might encourage me to take more care of curtail dates and deadlines in the future. At this point the situation was too upsetting for me to handle by myself and so I asked my mother to take over on my behalf. She called back Drew Griffith who told her that she may have luck speaking with the Dean. My mother then called the Dean, Jenn Stephenson, explaining that I understood that this was my mistake and that I took complete responsibility for my actions however the consequence, failing the course, seemed like a rather harsh outcome. This is when I was told to file an appeal. I realize that missing an exam due to my own fault, miswriting the time, is not necessarily extenuating circumstances however, the consequences of this do seem extenuating. This is my first year at Queen's and I am planning to go on and get my MBA after, therefore I am hoping that this mistake I made in my first semester of university does not negatively affect my future. I am hoping that by filling this appeal, the university would be able to determine a possible solution other then for me to simply fail the course.