DATE:
February 25, 2025
PARTIES:
University of Toronto v. Y.W.
HEARING DATE:
November 25, 2024
MEMBERS OF THE PANEL:
Karen Symes, Chair
Professor Mary Pugh, Faculty Panel Member
Samantha Chang, Student Panel Member
APPEARANCES:
Lily Harmer, Assistant Discipline Counsel, Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP
Chloe Hendrie, Co-Counsel, Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP
Sarah Mackenzie, Representative for the Student, Downtown Legal Services
HEARING SECRETARY:
Karen Bellinger, Associate Director, Office of Appeals, Discipline and Faculty Grievances
IN ATTENDANCE:
The Student
The Student was charged with knowingly forging or in any other way altering or falsifying a document or evidence required by the University, or uttering, circulating or making use of such forged, altered or falsified document, namely a Verification of Student Illness or Injury form (the “VOI Form”) submitted in support of a request for academic accommodation or relief in the form of a late application of CR/NCR in STA314H1F (the “Course”), contrary to section B.i.1(a) of the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters, 2019 (the “Code”).
The hearing proceeded on the basis of an Agreed Statement of Facts (the “ASF”) executed by the Student and the University. The ASF detailed that the Student was required to write a final exam worth 60% of their final grade for the Course. The Student was further required to select a CR/NCR option for the Course before the deadline on December 7, 2023, two days before the final exam. The Student wrote the final exam as scheduled. The Student submitted a petition ten days after the final exam seeking to have the CR/NCR option applied retrospectively to the Course, notwithstanding that they had missed the deadline, due to a purported illness.
The Student submitted the VOI, purportedly signed by a doctor, in support of such petition. Upon review of the petition by the Student Academic Integrity Office (the “SAI”), the VOI Form was discovered to have been modified by a user who added several pieces of information including the Student’s name, student number, as well as the incapacitation start and end date. Upon further investigation, the SAI discovered that the Student had not been treated by the doctor that purportedly signed the VOI Form, nor visited the medical clinic, during December 2023.
The Student later admitted, in email correspondence with the SAI and at a meeting with the Dean’s Designate, that they had forged the VOI Form because they were unable to attend a medical clinic to get a medical certificate and they were in a rush to submit the petition application. The Student admitted to each of the charges of academic misconduct in the ASF. Based on the facts in the ASF and the Student’s admissions, the Panel concluded that the Student had knowingly forged, altered or falsified the VOI Form and/or uttered, circulated or made use of such forged, altered or falsified VOI Form, contrary to section B.i.1(a) of the Code.
In determining the appropriate sanction, the Panel considered a Joint Submission on Penalty and Agreed Statement of Facts on Penalty (the “ASFP”) submitted by the Student and the University. The ASFP detailed that the Student had committed three prior academic offences. The ASFP also included evidence that the Student would provide if they testified at the hearing, including the fact that at the time of the offence, the Student was under significant personal and academic stress which impaired their judgement, and that the Student had since taken several steps, including seeking counseling services at the University, to ensure that such behaviour would never be repeated. During the hearing, the University took the position that this latter aspect of the ASFP, namely the outlined evidence of the Student, was not necessarily factually true, but that they did not wish to challenge the evidence by way of cross-examination. The Panel noted that an ASF should only include clear factual statements and should only be used when the underlying facts are clearly agreed upon. The Panel further observed that where ASFs are used in circumstances where the underlying facts are not agreed upon, the trier of fact is placed in an impossible situation of having to decide between conflicting evidence without the benefit of hearing viva voce evidence to assess credibility. In this case, given inconsistent evidence about the timing of, and the degree of impairment caused by the Student’s medical condition, the Panel was unable to make a factual finding about whether there was a nexus between the commission of the offence and the Student’s medical condition.
The Panel concluded that, in light of the Student’s prior offences, there was a significant risk of repetition of the misconduct. After considering all of the evidence and the submissions of the parties, the Panel concluded that the JSP was neither contrary to the public interest, nor would it bring the administration of justice into disrepute, and accepted the JSP on the basis that it fell within the range of penalties imposed in similar cases.
The Panel imposed the following sanction: a final grade of zero in the Course; a 3-year, 6-month suspension from the University; and a four-year, 6-month notation of the offence on the Student’s academic record and transcript.