This is a bit of a long one, so please bear with me
- I was a student at Queen Mary University Of London, reading Physics at an undergraduate level.
- Last year, a month before my assignments were due, I had a break-in in which my laptop, phone and cards were stolen, my laptop containing work I was due to submit in that submission period a month later. This was on top of an excruciatingly difficult year for me, personally, almost like Murphy's Law come to life.
- I lodged a complaint immediately, and because my cards were used in 4 different stores immediately following the burglary, with the details of the place and time of use, I had naturally high hopes of the police retrieving my devices [this was extremely important to me as all my personal work from the last 4 years, notes and projects, including work I was doing with my business partner on a startup whose application we were to submit in September, was in those devices, work which was invaluable, and I thus attempted to push the police to follow up on the very strong trail]
- My devices also had the work I was due to submit in the exam period next month, and I was counting on retrieving the devices because I did not have enough time to redo the work. It was this, coupled with the fact that would I have had submitted the Exceptional Circumstances application for an extension, I would have had to redo the whole year, something I could not afford with my financial position. I thus waited until the last moment, when it became inevitable that the police would not follow up on my case. It was this and the turbulence and the distress of the times which led me to miss submitting the request for an extension.
- I was informed in the immediate aftermath that I was now deregistered from the course. I attempted to reason, and take the missed assignments right then, but to no avail.
- The only option was to appeal the decision, which I did, which took 10 months to be delivered, including the final appeal, when it ought to have taken less than three, according to the information I was presented with.
- I plead to the appeal officers in both the appeals, explaining the dire implications of the verdict, as I will lay out below, and arguing against the unreasonable nature of the proceedings and the disproportionate impact of the verdict.
- A few words about what those dreaded implications are are in order here. I come from a low-income household, and my family had mortgaged our home to enable me to pursue my dream to study in the UK. All my plans were predicated on attaining my degree promptly, and this delay of a year, and the verdict that I won't be able to continue on, has derailed my plans with drastic consequences, with me and my family already starting to face the brunt of the impact. The house is at risk of being defaulted, with me at serious risk of falling into a debt spiral, because my plans required me to have graduated by now. Also, having exhausted the loan amount for my tuition fees in the first two years, I am also in the exceedingly constraining position of not being able to enroll in another course elsewhere. It is essentially this or bust. I made all of this clear to the appeal officers, hoping that these be taken into account as extenuating factors, but this was duly dismissed without a hint of its acknowledgment.
- All this over not submitting the EC application, and the appeals office not making an allowance for the most difficult period of my life as the reason for that to be a "good reason". Even in their guidelines, they state that their process should be "fair and reasonable". In what universe is being expelled due to not submitting an EC during a most tumultuous time, and discounting the personal factors surrounding the case, "fair and reasonable". In what universe is this callous treatment reasonable?
- I also feel that personal circumstances should not be divorced from the outcome passed by the university, especially when the personal circumstances are so drastic, and when the interpretation needed to make an allowance for my request is well within the bounds of the leeway of the expression "good reason" and "fair and reasonable".
- Nor was I given any chance to attempt to rectify my situation, or any other potential solutions. I was not even offered the grace of a phone call or an in-person meeting, despite repeated requests for it to plead my case in person such that one might see the face behind the facts of the case.
- To add insult to injury, my complaint to OIA, an independent institute that is supposed to objectively assess the validity of appeal verdicts, yielded nothing more than a "partially justified" outcome with a token £250 for the distress faced, but no recommendations for allowing me to retake the missed exams. This was a slap in the face after everything I had to go through.
- I had only been asking for one thing from the very start - to allow me to retake the modules I had missed, a most reasonable request, but my requests were treated in the most callous, dismissive, insensitive manner, with no concern for my welfare, this after I had spent £45,000 for my tuition fees, and sacrificed so much to study here. The insensitive, unreasonable treatment is extremely difficult to stomach, especially in light of a universities' duty to be "fair, and reasonable" and operate with its students' welfare in mind.
I write this because I am at a crisis point, with the university showing no willingness to communicate any options or solutions to me, with my visa running out in the next few, having my plans delayed by a year already, plans I absolutely had to be on top of, for reasons both financial and otherwise, with no option to start a course elsewhere, all over a missed EC during the most tumultuous time of my life. The gist of all this is that I have to find a way, and the only options I see left are having the ear of someone with some authority at Queen Mary, who would be able to see past the rigid bureaucratic protocols, into the heart of this situation, with an empathic lens who be an ally in this almost existential struggle I am in.
I implore you with all humility to lend your support to this struggle, through whichever means you might be able to, be it giving it voice, or be it relaying it to the ears of someone who could move the needle. I am compelled to do this because I have exhausted all my means and recourses, with the only option left to me is to broadcast my appeal, hoping that someone somewhere looks at this with compassion and sees it for it is, and in the process lends me the most valuable help they could.
I leave you thanking you from the bottom of my heart for your time and your earnest consideration.