Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: In FILM 240, I was working hard to receive exceptional grades: often either perfect, or in the 90s.

The final assignment worth 30% was due at 12:00PM. On the due date around 11:30, I started trying to upload the assignment to onQ. I spent time converting the document into several formats and even trying to convert its size, but onQ continued to show me the same error message. At 11:43PM, I took a screenshot of this error message.I continued to try different ways of uploading as the early minutes past midnight continued, hoping that I would be able to hand it in only a few minutes late. Eventually, I saw that it had reached 12:30 and realized this issue would persist. I emailed Professor Philippe Gauthier at 12:30 with an attached copy of my assignment, and a description of what happened. I knew that he didn't accept submissions via email, but thought it was all I could do. 10 minutes later, I also emailed my TA the assignment along with the timestamped screenshot of the error notification. My professor responded saying that as per the syllabus, he A) did not accept assignments via email, and B) did not accept any late work without accommodations through ASC academics. I applied for extenuating circumstances through the portal using the supporting documentation of a verifiable, timestamped screenshot, and did not receive them. I then emailed the IT department requesting a record of my submission attempts, and they told me they did not record this information.

I have asked many people throughout this process what I could have done differently. The response I have gotten has been that I should have used Queens' computer instead of my own, because the technical error was on my end. I know for a fact that this is not true because I was working on a laptop that was just days old at the time. The error was clearly on OnQ-- the error message was FROM OnQ-- not my laptop. I also do not think this is realistic or fair to expect that I would have the time and resources to leave my house late at night (especially as a woman) and get to campus on time to submit this. The whole situation just seems incredibly unfair.

I believe that it would be unfair to allow an OnQ error to impact a student's grade by 30%. Given this severe inconsistency (grade of 0 on this assignment) with the rest of my grades in the course, I am appealing for an aegrotat standing in FILM 240.