Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean Dr. Jenn Stephenson,

I am writing this letter requesting an academic appeal due to extenuating circumstances I faced last year. I am aware that this is a late request however I hadn??t known about this process until I had spoken to an academic advisor recently. I am requesting that my grades in Mathematics 121 and Chemistry 112 be changed to credit standing, and that my Physics 117 grade be dropped. It is with a heavy heart that I speak about the grounds of my request and I would like to warn you beforehand of the harsh and dark subject matter at hand. I am an Iranian-Canadian immigrant and though I??m extremely grateful to be able to live and study in Canada, the impacts of the Iranian regime continue to affect my day to day life. Last August (August 2021), my grandmother passed away very suddenly right before my first year at Queens University. At the time Iranian Government withheld the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine from the Iranian population and the only available vaccine was a non-FDA approved Russian vaccine that was unsafe. My grandmother was only 69 years old however at the time she was undergoing treatment for Endometrial cancer and was therefore immunocompromised and didn??t have access to a safe vaccine. She passed very suddenly shortly after becoming sick with coronavirus and my family and I were in shock and traumatised. The difficult aspect of this situation is that she passed in Iran, therefore we were not able to visit to properly mourn and grieve her death due to the fact that my parents had publicly protested the Iranian Government??s injustices regarding the coronavirus pandemic along with the fact that they had signed several petitions in disagreement with the regime, therefore our family members strongly suggested we don??t go to Iran as there was the possibility of our passports being detained by the Iranian border officers. In the process of trying to navigate and mourn my grandmother??s death without proper grieving, I had lost myself and I wasn??t aware of the impact that this was having in my academic life. I had thought that I would be able to process everything on my own with the help of my family, and I thought I would be able to persevere and succeed academically. However, last year, in the time of disagreement and protests, the Iranian government would cut off internet access periodically and I had no contact with my family. Not only did I not have their support, but I didn??t even know if they were okay at all; the regime protests last year were much smaller than the more recent ones therefore most of the people in attendance were imprisoned by the morality police or killed, so this was a huge concern for me and my immediate family in Canada. All this tragedy, stress, and sadness had an immense impact on me and I wouldn??t be able to leave the house certain days. I thought that healing on my own would be more effective than receiving help from the wellness services as Queens as I found it very difficult to speak about anything I was going through with anyone and in so doing, I had lost myself. During the pre-exam period break in the winter, my mother went through a very dark period of grief that was stopping her from being able to tend to my younger brother, so I went back home to Vancouver so I could help as much as I could with getting him to school, driving him to his extracurricular classes, and helping him with his schoolwork so my mother had proper time to process her own mother??s death( I have included the plane & train tickets as documentation). However this trip home immensely impacted the amount of studying and attention I could pay to my exams that took place the following weeks. During the winter term, I found myself scrambling to balance school and family matters while being left in the dark with the cut-off of communication from my other family and it was a difficult and dark period for me. These particular three classes are extremely difficult and required a lot of time and work, and I had worked as hard as I could given the circumstances, but my grades were not a reflection of my true ability and I had been placed under academic probation. To this day, the trauma of my grandmother??s passing and the shockwaves that my family and I experienced in the process of her mourning still exist. The injustices my family and countless others experienced courtesy of the Iranian government were a debilitating factor that elongating the healing process and caused my sadness to eventually envelop in stress. Though this was difficult for me to write and speak about, I truly appreciate your consideration and your time spent reading my letter.