Chances of Getting Academic Suspension Appealed?

Question by Samantha: Chances of getting academic suspension appealed?
Hi,

I attend Virginia Commonwealth University.
I was put on academic suspension this semester and am currently a sophomore.

I would like to appeal the decision, and would like to hear opinions on what my chances would be.

The past two years have been extremely hard on my family, emotionally and financially. In 2010 my uncle, who is a doctor, was wrongly accused with attempting to distribute prescription drugs. If found guilty he faced up to 10 years in prison on each charge and possible deportation to India if convicted of a felony. From the time he was arrested until 6 months later where he was found innocent, he was not allowed to practice. The clinic started losing patients, and practically had no income coming in and since my mother and uncle are employed under him it caused a lot of stress within my family financially because he was not able to pay them. Although he was innocent his license was suspended for 2 years when he unknowingly signed an agreement before the trial’s outcome. Ever since January 2010 it had been a struggle to find a doctor to replace him for 2 years. Since the clinic is in a small town where gossip spreads like wild fire the business came to an immediate stop with patients leaving and transferring out when they had seen what was on the news and immediately assumed worse. Since my mom basically manages the business all the burden and stress was put on her to keep the business afloat for two years until my uncle came back. This put a lot of stress on me as well because she was not being paid and the only income was my father’s who works at Coca-Cola.
Since my uncle was not being paid as well, my grandmother had to move in with him to help and try to support his family. He was the only income since his wife went back to school and he has 2 kids.
My family is extremely close, and did what what we had to do to try to keep each one stable, sometimes it was just too much stress though.

Fast forward to now, the business has picked up again, we have found a replacement doctor with my uncle returning in 3 months. Although there is still a lot of stress and financial trouble, the light at the tunnel is shining through.

So during all of this my grades were definitely affected.

My Freshman year fall semester I ended up with a 2.294 gpa and was in “good standing”

Freshman year my spring semester I received a “2.00” gpa, making my cumulative a 2.192. During this semester my gpa did drop below a 2.0 putting my academic standing on “warning.” I retook the classes that I failed that spring semester and brought it up to the 2.0 but the “warning” does not change, unless appealed which i just found out about today.

My fall 2011 semester I ended up with a 1.50 gpa bringing my cumulative to a 1.950 gpa. Causing my academic standing to change to “Probation.”

This spring 2012 semester I knew I had to raise up my grades in order to continue but one of my family member’s brain tumor came back and was stated life threatening with up to 4 months to live unless treated. He lives in Cambodia where the medical treatment is not up to par with America and was basically told that if he did not go to America for treatment he would just have to wait and die. We had to find more than $ 4,000 as fast as we could, and the stress within my family was at an all time high. On top of this one of my close family friends had a heart attack.

This caused a lot of stress on me during finals week and caused me to fail my chemistry class which brought my cumulative gpa to a 1.78

I know there is no excuse but I feel like they should take in consideration of the freshman year spring semester in which my academic standing would have been out on “warning” instead of “probation.”

I am going to appeal this but since the appeal council does not have eyes within every family how I would prove that my family member was re diagnosed with a brain tumor, that my uncle was trialed, and that our close family friend had a heart attack.

Thank you so much.
Also, does anyone know how I should out this all in one letter without it being too overwhelming or disorganized?

Thanks again.
I can google my uncle and many articles come up, can I use those?

Best answer:

Answer by cathrl69
“how I would prove that my family member was re diagnosed with a brain tumor, that my uncle was trialed, and that our close family friend had a heart attack.”

The fact you told them about these things at the time will prove it. You can’t expect them to believe a sob story years long which suddenly appears only now.

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