Have you been charged with academic misconduct? If so, you might be wondering how to defend yourself against such charges. Academic misconduct allegations should be taken seriously because they can damage your academic and professional career as well as your reputation. This is the reason you must hire an academic misconduct attorney to represent or advise you.
Understanding Academic Integrity Violations
Academic misconduct or integrity violations come in many forms. The following are the most common forms:
- Cheating. Cheating occurs when a student gets unauthorized assistance, uses their mobile device for looking up test questions, looks at the test of another student, or uses an old course material of a friend.
- Plagiarism. A student commits plagiarism when they copy another person’s words or ideas without citations, submit purchased assignments, submit the same paper to different courses, or pass off an assignment that another student completed.
- Honor code violations. These violations include possessing alcohol, weapons, or illicit drugs on school grounds or showing inappropriate behavior in clinical settings.
How an Academic Misconduct Lawyer Can Help
The academic integrity process is unique to a college or university. This process is often outlined in the student handbook or on the website of the school. It includes a lot of steps and for an accused students to have the best chance to defend themselves, they should involve an attorney as early as possible.
The steps involved in the academic misconduct process can easily overwhelm a student. A lawyer can help them draft emails for records, fight to include or exclude certain evidence, discuss possible witnesses, and help write a student’s arguments. With their extensive experience in the process, they have developed knowledge of what works and what does not work when it comes to defending students facing a misconduct violation in their college or university. Also, a lawyer can attend hearings as a student’s legal advisor. By having an attorney on their side during academic integrity hearings, a student can keep calm and ensure the fair is kept fair and honest.
What to Expect from an Academic Integrity Hearing?
During this type of hearing, the accused student will need to face a panel of decision-makers composed of school staff and students. This can be quite overwhelming and a student who is not familiar with this process can make their already bad situation even worse. This hearing is meant to determine whether the student is guilty or innocent and assign the appropriate sanction including a possible suspension or expulsion from the school.
