Campus Misconduct, Title IX and Disciplinary Matters
All colleges and universities publish complaint, investigation and disciplinary proceeding guidelines, policies and procedures. They usually are found in printed or on-line student handbooks. Most are difficult to understand. While most schools require absolute student compliance with them, many schools routinely fail to adhere to their own policies and procedures. And many schools also fail to meet their related legal obligations to fairly and appropriately investigate and take action in response to these types of allegations.
When schools mismanage the complaint process and violate the legal rights of students who complain about, or who are accused of sexually oriented misconduct on campus it is the students who suffer damaging consequences - often life altering - including the loss of valuable rights and benefits. On a rapidly increasing basis, schools across the country are finding themselves having to defend their failures to meet their legal obligations to students when receiving, investigating and responding to complaints of misconduct, in civil court actions. Courts across the country are uniformly recognizing these actions as valid, allowing them to proceed to a conclusion thereby allowing students to pursue and receive appropriate remedies when they have been wronged and damaged by the schools they trust not to do them harm. Our firm assists students in making complaints, defending complaints and when necessary, protecting their rights in court.
