My name is Mrs. Marla Rice. I am creating this petition for my son, Kristian Philpotts or as he preferred to be called "KP", to be honored with a posthumous Veterinarian degree from the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign. KP wanted to be a veterinarian since the age of seven years old and that has never changed. He was on the right path to become a veterinarian before he was killed driving for Lyft earlier this year.

He completed his bachelor in pre-veterinary medicine and his master degree in Biology /Pre-veterinary medicine and was working on trying to get his final degree (which was his doctorate), when there was a robbery attempt and he was murdered while working to save money to attend Veterinarian school. He was currently applying to the University of Illinois a couple of months before his murder.

I reached out to the university and asked them to give him an honorary doctorate degree and was denied immediately and was told that he was not a student of the school, but honorary degrees do not require that a person has to be a student. Since then, I had been given the complete run around as well as ignored calls and emails. I turned in all of the paperwork that the University of Illinois listed on their website for the requirements to get this degree and my son qualifies under a couple of the categories.

This university again rejected my son, in less than 24 hours of me sending this paperwork. I really don't think that they looked at it and they cannot give me a reason for the denial. Now they are saying that my 29-year-old son does not have enough recognition under his name that the older people in the previous honoree list has. The requirements do not give a time frame for different recognitions and it is not his fault that he was murdered at an early age. 

I asked several times why he was denied the honorary doctorate degree and they are refusing to provide me with an answer. The committee, the department head, as well as the president has not been responding to my emails or communicating with me at all and this has been going on since February 2022.  The committee is the one to make this decision, but the university has been denying him. Whenever a spokesperson does reply, it is a different excuse each time. 

I am starting this petition to get signatures to fight to get my son the degree that he would have gotten if his life was not cut short. He was a public service worker, hosted annual fundraisers for kids and families that were less fortunate, went to the local pet stores and rented animals to educate the per- Kindergarten students about animal science (he self- funded all of this).  He was a Iota Phi Theta fraternity brother since 2013. He reopened his fraternity chapter at Eastern Illinois University, that has been closed for 27 years and at University of Illinois that was closed for 7 years as well as recruiting new members to save his fraternity from becoming extinct and provided many more positive contributions to society, in the short amount of time that he had on this earth.  I have created a scholarship in his name and has raised over $25,000 on GoFundMe to fund this Veterinarian scholarship, that will help another student every year that is going to school to be a veterinarian or dealing with Animal Science. This scholarship was opened on July 17, 2022.

Please sign this petition and join me in demanding the University of Illinois honor my son's legacy by issuing him with a posthumous degree.