Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean:
My name is Brigette Piazza, (student number 10060962) and I am writing you this letter in regards to my Departure of Academic Integrity that Dr. Stanka Fitneva had outlined, specifically- ¿¿Using direct quotations or large sections of paraphrased material in an assignment without proper acknowledgement.¿ By definition, plagiarism is ¿¿the practice of taking someone else¿¿s work or ideas and passing them off as one¿¿s own.¿ Although mistakenly, I did not put the sentences that Dr. Fitneva had outlined in quotation marks, there is clearly evidence of a citation at the end of every sentence she has highlighted. There is clearly no malicious intent made throughout my paper I had submitted. In addition, I am not directly in the Psychology Department, and therefore being exposed to multiple different types of citation styles and references such as Art History, Cognitive Science, etc. I agree Plagiarism is a very big phenomenon in which I feel students are not fully educated about or really emphasized on. I am an undergraduate student- meaning I know there are supposed to be multiple citations and references throughout papers, reports, labs and so on because we are not at a level where we can provide our own findings ourselves. Meaning, I am well aware that professors are well educated about what an undergraduate¿¿s work looks like and what they are expecting. Therefore, for me to maliciously try and plagiarize would be dense and ultimately simple-minded of me. Upon my meeting with Dr. Stanka Fitneva, she had said that she had sent out a forum post in regards to our first assignment and how ¿¿there was such a widespread of plagiarism¿ that she could not do anything about it. However, I was enrolled in 6 courses this term and because every forum post directly translates into an email, I had unsubscribed from receiving forum posts from my classes due to the fact I would be receiving over hundreds of emails a day and ultimately freezing my phone. That being said, I was under the understanding that individuals who had plagiarized on the first assignment were given a fair warning, whereas I did not receive a warning at all. Correspondingly, upon submission after the first assignment Dr. Fitneva had assigned us, I was one of the individuals who could not open their feedback file. I had emailed my TA in order to review the comments, she had told me to send back my assignment so she can send me my assignment with my comments- I had done so and she had not gotten back to me so if there was any previous acts of plagiarism on my first assignment, I would not have known about it. I hope and anticipate that you will see that this is just as a concern for me as it is for you and Queen¿¿s University as a whole. Again, as I have said to Dr. Fitneva, I take full responsibility for my actions and I am unconditionally sorry and apologetic in regards to the situation at hand and I hope you can accept this as not plagiarism but a grammatical error, and that this is an error in my learning, and not of malicious intent. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any further questions. I will be more than happy to meet with you further to discuss this matter if need be. Thanks again for your time and consideration, it is greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks,
Brigette Piazza