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The Petition Process

Formally, the process is as follows (see the Calendar for exact deadline dates for the current year). Needless to say, few requests go through all steps.

1. First Request

You submit your petition in writing through your college registrar’s office.

Deadlines:

  • For Term Work: end of the Final Exam Period
  • For Deferred Exams: 5 working days after the end of the Final Exam Period
  • For Grading Practices Policy: last day of classes in the course
  • For Late Withdrawal: 6 months after the end of the session.

Your First Request is considered on the basis of your written materials by the Petitions Office on behalf of the Committee on Standing, using the guidelines and past practices of the Committee. You receive a written response by mail, either Granting the petition or Refusing it. (Be sure to read the full decision, as the details may be as important as the ‘Granted’ or ‘Refused.’) If the petition is granted, the situation is resolved. If the petition is refused, you have the choice of taking it to the next step.

Response Timeline: Most petitions, especially the straight-forward ones, are dealt with promptly. Some take over a month from the time you submit all the materials, depending on how complicated your case is, and whether departments or instructors need to be consulted for further information. The response will be quicker if your petition articulates your situation clearly, completely, and concisely, and all relevant documentation is attached. The Faculty makes a firm endeavour to deal with a petition in no longer than 90 days, provided the student submits the necessary materials in a timely fashion.

2. Appeal: Second Request

If your First Request is refused, and if you think you have further information or further arguments to make in support of your request, you may appeal the decision by making a Second Request through your college registrar’s office. Before doing so, you should consult your college registrar’s office to discuss your case.

Deadline: You must file your Second Request within 90 days of the date of the decision on your First Request.

You are essentially asking the Committee on Standing to review your case, again using written materials. Your initial request was given careful consideration, but did not meet the Committee’s normal criteria for an exception to the rules. Petitions successful at the second stage are often ones that provide more detailed information, further explanations or new documentation that might give a different perspective on the initial request. Where such new information makes the Second Request grantable under the normal criteria, the Petitions Office will grant it immediately. Otherwise it will be reviewed at a meeting of the Committee on Standing. The Committee is made up of professors, college registrars and a student, and is chaired by a Vice-Dean. You will hear in writing whether your request is Granted or Refused.

Response Timeline: The Committee on Standing meets once a month throughout the year. It may be necessary to collect additional information before the Committee can hear the request, but you will receive a decision as soon as possible, and almost never beyond the 90-day guideline noted above.

3. Appeal: Academic Appeals Board

If your Second Request is denied, you may take it to the next level. This is the Faculty’s Academic Appeals Board. You do so by indicating you want to Appeal (again in writing through your college registrar’s office), and this time it is considered entirely afresh by a different group of people. You may submit a fresh statement, but you need not do so.

Deadline: You must file your Appeal within 90 days of the date on the decision of the Committee on Standing refusing your Second Request.

The Academic Appeals Board operates according to its own Rules of Procedure (PDF document).

The Board is made up of professors and student representatives different from those on the Committee on Standing. The Chair of the Committee on Standing appears before the Appeals Board to represent the Committee on Standing and explain its decision regarding the Second Request. At this appeal level, you have the right to appear in person to present and explain your case. You may also engage legal assistance to support you in presenting your appeal if you wish. (A student lawyer from Downtown Legal Services is a good option for those on a tight budget.) You will receive a formal, written response accepting or denying your appeal, and giving reasons for the decision.

Response Timeline: Normally, the Appeals Board will meet within 90 days of receiving your request for a hearing.

4. Appeals: Academic Appeals Committee, Governing Council

If your appeal is denied by the Faculty’s Board, the final level of appeal is the University’s Academic Appeals Committee. This meets infrequently and is a more formal panel chaired by someone with legal expertise. If you reach this stage, you’ll be receiving information and guidance in more formal ways than this Guide. Students are more inclined to seek legal assistance at this level, although it is not mandatory.

Deadline: You must file your appeal from the Appeals Board refusal within 90 days of the date on that decision. The appeal must be submitted in writing to the Office of the Governing Council, Simcoe Hall.

Response Timeline: As the Appeals Committee hears appeals from across the whole University and draws its membership widely, the normal time for a hearing and response may extend from months to almost a year.

Deadlines & Late Petitions

The Faculty does not accept petitions after the deadlines, and your college registrar’s office will not forward late petitions to the Faculty. If there are justifiable and compelling reasons why you have submitted the petition after the deadline, talk about your situation with your college registrar’s office. “Ignorance” (never a good justification in a place dedicated to knowledge) isn’t an adequate reason. If there are legitimate reasons, you will be asked to explain them as part of the petition or appeal. The lateness issue will be addressed first, and only if the reasons are considered legitimate will the Petitions Office address the substance of your petition.

Confidentiality

All student records are confidential, including your petition and its documentation. The University has a strict policy on this. To quote from the policy, only those staff members who need to may “have access to relevant portions of an official student academic record for purposes related to the performance of their duties.”

This “need-to-know” clause applies to petitions in a number of ways. The petitions Office may need to know some information from your discussions with the staff in your college registrar’s office in order to understand your true situation as part of reaching a decision. The Committee on Standing does not need to know your identity to hear your request, so your petition is assigned a case number and heard anonymously. The Petitions Office generally tries not to reveal the personal details in a petition to a department official or instructor, but occasionally they too must be taken into the circle of those who “need to know” in order to gain a clear understanding of what happened or what should be done. And finally, no summary or notation of a petition goes onto your official transcript. The resulting WDR or “Academic penalty not imposed; permitted by petition to re-register on Academic Probation,” etc., may appear, but the details or substance of the petition will not.

If your petition involves something extremely personal that would be troubling to put on paper, you should discuss your confidentiality concerns with your college registrar. Generally, you are strongly urged to disclose fully all the facts relevant to your petition when you make it in the first instance, however potentially embarrassing you may think them. It is best to reveal all at the outset so the matter can be settled fairly, rather than trying to hold back some things until later when nothing else seems to have worked. That just keeps you from getting the remedy you need in a timely way and frustrates the people trying to help you with a fair remedy to your situation.

Documentation

You will need official documentation that confirms you were unable to do what you were supposed to do on the dates you were supposed to do it, i.e., documentation must indicate incapacity, and give the dates or period affected. Generally speaking, the stronger your documentation, the stronger your case.

Proper documentation is both a formal requirement for a petition and a necessary tool to ascertain the facts. You should not take it personally that the Faculty requires, for example, evidence of a relative’s death. Such documentation simply must accompany a petition request to justify formally an exception being made to the Faculty’s published rules.

The most common documentation is a medical certificate. The Petitions Office accepts medical documentation only on the U of T Medical Certificate, available:

Those doctor’s notes with ‘Patient was ill’ or “Off work” scribbled on little prescription pads won’t be accepted. Also, the Medical Certificate must indicate that the doctor diagnosed and treated you when you were ill; it cannot just report that you told the doctor after-the-fact that you were ill previously.

Other documentation can certainly be relevant. If you have to work, a note from your employer; if you’ve had a traffic accident, a copy of the police accident report; if someone died, a copy of the death certificate or a funeral notice; if your request involves travel, a copy of your ticket or itinerary. If you have been seeing someone for help with your personal problems who isn’t a doctor, a letter on official letterhead is sufficient. They needn’t fill out the UT Medical Certificate since they aren’t strictly “medical,” but in their note they should answer some of the same questions, as that sort of information is what the Faculty needs to decide your case, so you won’t have to go back a second time for more details. Letters from family members are generally not helpful.

UTOR E-mail Address Changes & Follow-up

Note that the UTOR E-mail address you put on your petition form is where the response will be sent. The Petitions system is not connected with ROSI for security reasons, so you must alert your college registrar’s office if you change your UTOR E-mail address while you have a petition under consideration, or the Deferred Examinations Office if you are waiting to receive instructions for viewing your personal deferred examination schedule.

The Faculty puts the responsibility on you, and expects you to follow up with your registrar’s office if you haven’t received a response for an unusually long time, i.e., outside the response timelines noted in this Guide.