Defending Lone Star College System Students

Community College's Access Value

Community colleges like southeastern Texas's Lone Star College System play a critical role in local, regional, national, and individual development. Community colleges open doors to higher education because of their low cost, local presence, and flexible and accessible programs. Lone Star College System is a good example, spreading its campuses strategically around Montgomery County just north of the metropolitan Houston area. Younger and older students who cannot afford time away to study at a traditional four-year college or university can often attend community college to get a start on higher education or add important courses, credits, and certifications. Community colleges especially open doors for working students, students with children, students with dependent parents or other relatives, immigrant ESL students, and students without the financial access or resources to afford traditional colleges or universities. Community colleges are a great thing for many students, carrying enormous value to those students, the locale, and the region. The Greater Houston area is better off for the Lone Star College System, as are the System's many earnest students.

Community College Discipline's Outsized Impact

Yet the same things that make community colleges so helpful in opening doors to higher education and personal advancement give community college discipline an outsized negative impact. The student who suffers suspension or dismissal from a Lone Star College System campus may have just lost the student's only real educational option. Suspension, expulsion, or other school discipline always carries some impact. But students attending traditional programs full-time often have the personal wherewithal to minimize or at least navigate those impacts. Given their greater resources, traditional students at four-year colleges and universities can often make the best of a difficult discipline situation, perhaps by sitting out a term or year, transferring to another school, or gaining readmission and restarting their program. Community college students generally don't have those options. The community college they attend is often their only practical choice. And they often have only one good chance, where a setback like suspension or expulsion means the sure or probable end of their educational dreams.

Defending Community College Disciplinary Charges

That outsized negative impact is what makes it especially worthwhile to vigorously dispute, defend, and defeat disciplinary charges by retaining skilled and experienced academic administrative attorney representation. A community college's disciplinary procedures can be daunting and confusing, especially when the charges themselves have already frightened and intimidated the accused student. Students don't generally have the necessary training and experience with academic dispute resolution procedures. School disciplinary officials, though, do have that training and experience. Disciplinary charges may intimidate you, but charges won't intimidate them. To level that playing field, you need an accomplished and effective attorney advisor advocate in your corner. If you face Lone Star College System disciplinary charges threatening your suspension or dismissal, retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's student defense team. Doing so will be your best move to preserve your educational future.

The Lone Star College System

Lone Star College is a public community college system serving the Greater Houston area in southeastern Texas. The Lone Star College System enrolls nearly 100,000 students, making it one of the nation's larger community college systems. Eight campuses located strategically around Montgomery County, north of Houston, serve those students. Lone Star College identifies those eight campuses as LSC-CyFair, LSC-Houston North, LSC-Kingwood, LSC-Montgomery, LSC-North Harris, LSC-Online, LSC-Tomball, and LSC-University Park. The Lone Star College System locates its headquarters in The Woodlands, just north of Houston and in southern Montgomery County. Featured alumni tell wonderful stories of the value of their Lone Star College education in improving their lives. Don't lose that value to disciplinary charges. National school discipline defense attorney Joseph D. Lento is available to defend you against disciplinary charges, no matter which Lone Star College System campus you attend, the number of credits you've already earned, or your choice of program.

Lone Star College System Governance

The Lone Star College System maintains centralized governance. That means that system-wide Lone Star College policies will govern your disciplinary matter. A single chancellor heads the Lone Star College System, supported by a cabinet of vice-chancellors, including a chief operating officer, chief financial officer, and general counsel. Each Lone Star College System campus also has its own president to carry out central administration policies, including disciplinary policies and procedures. A system-wide Lone Star College board of trustees establishes those policies. The board of trustees acknowledges that it “is responsible for ensuring that the Lone Star College System is an integral part of their communities and serves their ever-changing needs.” The Lone Star College board does so in part by establishing a “climate for learning” that the board's disciplinary policies promote and preserve. Texas Education Code Section 130.001 expressly authorizes community college boards to adopt college standards, rules, and regulations, just as the Lone Star College board has done for student discipline. The Lone Star College System board takes seriously its obligation to discipline students to preserve campus safety and instructional integrity. You, too, should take disciplinary charges seriously.

Lone Star College System Behavioral Misconduct Policies

The Lone Star College System board's Policy Manual Section VI.E. establishes the system-wide Student Code of Conduct. If you face disciplinary charges at your Lone Star College System campus, campus disciplinary officials will have issued those charges under Policy Manual Section VI.E. Community colleges, like other higher education institutions, charge students with various forms of behavioral misconduct under student codes of conduct. You and your retained attorney advisor representative will look to the Policy Manual's Section VI.E. to determine whether the college has the authority to issue the disciplinary charges. Retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento to help you defend and defeat behavioral misconduct charges. The Lone Star College System's Student Code of Conduct lists both general and specific student standards. Those standards, some of them with lengthy definitions, prohibit a broad scope of student behaviors, including:

computer misuse such as disrupting access, stealing passwords, viewing or storing obscene materials, displaying sexually explicit images, transmitting sexually explicit messages, or overloading the device;
weapons possession including firearms, ammunition, explosives, knives over 5.5 inches long, brass knuckles, zip guns, clubs, and simulated weapons;
hazing including any intentional or reckless act endangering another student's mental or physical health or welfare;
disrupting, obstructing, or interfering with college activities;
threats, stalking, or harassing including physical or psychological abuse;
unauthorized drones or other unmanned aerial vehicles;
tobacco use within buildings, including e-cigarettes and vaping;
false reports initiated or induced within the college;
false fire alarms including damaging fire equipment;
alcohol and controlled substance possession, use, or distribution;
littering, damaging, or defacing school property;
unauthorized gambling including lotteries and raffles;
violating local, state, or federal law;
obscene, vulgar, lewd, or indecent conduct;
false information or misrepresentation to any college official;
forging or falsifying college documents or other misuse;
theft or attempted theft of college property or services;
trespass or other unauthorized facility or equipment use;
disobeying orders of college security personnel or officials;
disrupting class;
violating professional norms in clinical settings and assignments; and
abandoning children without appropriate daycare.

Lone Star College System Behavioral Misconduct Procedures

The Lone Star College System board's Policy Manual Section VI.F.1 provides for the college's behavioral misconduct disciplinary procedures. Disciplinary procedures can go a long way toward helping you defend and defeat behavioral misconduct charges, especially when you retain the skilled and experienced attorney advisor representation you need for a winning defense. Indeed, Policy Manual Section VI.F.1 guarantees that students receive their constitutional due process rights. The section states, “Except during periods of disruption, students must receive due process before they may be suspended or expelled. Due process requires notifying students of charges against them, explaining evidence against them, and giving students a fair opportunity to present their side of the story.” Complaints of student behavioral misconduct go to the college's chief conduct officer. Complainants must share all relevant facts and evidence while committing to participating in the college's investigation and hearing. The latter requirement discourages false or exaggerated complaints. After investigating, the chief conduct officer or designee may impose any sanction. But the college must grant students facing suspension or expulsion a hearing, including the following protections, for any student requesting that hearing:

notify the student of the time, date, and place of the hearing;
state the specific allegations of behavioral misconduct;
disclose the evidence, including witnesses supporting those allegations;
provide copies of evidence to the accused student;
permit the student to present the student's own evidence;
permit the student to confront and question adverse witnesses;
decide the matter with a written opinion on all charges;
explain any behavioral misconduct findings against the student;
determine the sanction of suspension or expulsion; and
permit an appeal, presumably to the System's chancellor.

Lone Star College System Academic Standards

Safety and security may be a school's first concern, but community colleges, like other higher education institutions, also charge students with academic misconduct. Academic standards are integral to a community college's educational mission. Without academic standards, the school cannot ensure that students are learning as their exam scores indicate. The Lone Star College System board's Policy Manual Section V.D. establishes the system-wide academic standards. Policy Manual Section V.D. prohibits all forms of “academic dishonesty” without limiting those forms. Policy Manual Section V.D. instead lists as non-exclusive examples of academic dishonesty “bribing, cheating, deceiving, fabricating, impersonating, plagiarizing, engaging in professional misconduct during, and sabotaging, an academic evaluation/assessments.” Importantly, to constitute academic dishonesty under Policy Manual Section V.D., the student must engage in one or more of the above acts “with the intent to deceive an instructor or third party in assessing an individual's academic mastery of an academic component, assignment, area, subject, course, class, or program.” Innocent mistakes are not generally academic dishonesty at Lone Star College campuses.

Lone Star College Academic Misconduct Procedures

The Lone Star College System board's Policy Manual Section V.F. establishes the procedures your campus should follow to determine academic dishonesty charges. Significantly, those procedures assure you of due process. Policy Manual Section V.F. states expressly, “Except during periods of disruption, students must receive due process before they may be suspended or expelled. Due process requires notifying students of charges against them, explaining evidence against them, and giving students a fair opportunity to present their side of the story.” Due process is generally a constitutional requirement for longer-term public school suspensions and expulsions. To provide due process, Policy Manual Section V.F. requires academic misconduct complaints to go to the college's chief academic officer. If, after investigating, the officer or designee believes the student's alleged misconduct may warrant suspension or expulsion, the officer or designee must refer the complaint for an Academic Integrity Review Committee hearing. To conduct the required hearing, the college must:

notify the student of the time, date, and place of the hearing;
state the specific allegations of academic misconduct;
disclose the evidence, including witnesses supporting those allegations;
provide copies of evidence to the accused student;
permit the student to present the student's own evidence;
permit the student to confront and question adverse witnesses;
decide the matter with a written opinion on all charges;
explain any academic misconduct findings against the student;
determine the sanction of suspension or expulsion; and
permit an appeal to the System's chancellor.

Representation in Lone Star College System Hearings

The above Lone Star College System behavioral misconduct and academic misconduct policies do not address the role of the accused student's attorney advisor representative. Lone Star College campuses may accordingly permit, encourage, or discourage attorney advisor representation. They may even offer a school counselor or staff member to give you procedural advice. No matter the position school officials take, you should retain and rely on your own skilled and experienced attorney advisor. School officials have conflicts of interest when advising you about disciplinary charges. They work for the school, not you. They will not vigorously advocate your interests. Instead, retain national school discipline defense attorney Joseph D. Lento to invoke and strategically deploy your procedural protections. Procedural protections are not self-executing. You must generally request and require the college to provide them. Attorney advisor Lento can help you accomplish all of the following in a winning defense of your charges:

evaluate and answer the charges;
timely invoke investigation and hearing procedures;
communicate and negotiate with disciplinary officials;
identify and acquire exonerating and mitigating evidence;
prepare cross-examination questions for adverse witnesses;
attend hearings and conferences as permitted; and
evaluate and appeal the written decision if adverse.

Lone Star College System Sanctions

To ensure that you treat disciplinary charges with the respect they are due, you should know the college's available sanctions. Lone Star College System disciplinary policies, like the one in Policy Manual VI.F. applying to non-academic misconduct, authorize the college to impose “oral or written warning, probation, suspension, expulsion, or other proper penalty” as disciplinary sanctions. The college can, in other words, pretty much do as it pleases, including with other sanctions like suspension of financial aid and imposition of fines, remedial instruction, and community or campus service. Lone Star College System Policy Manual VI.F. and related sections from similar college policies further provide that “suspension or expulsion shall have College-wide effect. A student suspended or expelled from one college may not enroll at another college without the Executive Vice Chancellor's permission unless the sanction has expired by its own terms or has been reversed on appeal.” You cannot, in other words, avoid sanctions by moving your registration to another campus. Policy Manual VI.F. adds that “[a]ny student facing unresolved discipline for non-academic misconduct may not register without the College's permission.” A disciplinary charge keeps you from continuing your Lone Star College program. Lone Star College System disciplinary sanctions have immediate debilitating impacts.

Lone Star College System SAP Charges

To receive federal funding, including the proceeds of federal student loans, the Lone Star College System and other colleges and universities must maintain satisfactory academic progress (SAP) policies setting minimum grade points and other academic requirements. You may have thought that your Lone Star College minimum grade-point average requirement was just a matter of tradition or integrity. Think again. Your college must have that and other progress standards, or it will lose its essential federal funding. Satisfactory academic progress (SAP) policies create substantial academic risks for many community college students. Community college students, working and responsible for their families, often have limited time and energy to devote to studies and may also lack the academic preparation of students attending four-year colleges and universities. Those limitations mean that more community college students may perform less well academically than they otherwise would, placing them in SAP peril. If your academics suffer, you may face Lone Star College System SAP charges, probation, and dismissal. The Lone Star College System's SAP Policy requires students to:

maintain at least a 2.00 / 4.00 grade-point average;
complete at least two-thirds (67%) of credits attempted; and
complete the degree program within 150% of degree requirements (90 hours for a 60-hour associate's degree program).

Lone Star College System SAP Appeals

Lone Star College System students who fail to meet these SAP standards are on probation for the first term. Probationary students may still receive federal student loans. If, though, the student cannot raise the student's academics to once again meet SAP standards within that first probationary term, then the student cannot receive student loans. Fortunately, federal SAP regulations permit colleges and universities to waive SAP requirements for students who can demonstrate compelling circumstances excusing the deficient academic performance. Lone Star College System's SAP Policy states, “Students may appeal ineligibility by providing information on extenuating circumstances, indicating what has changed to allow successful academic progress. If an appeal is granted, students will be asked to follow an academic plan that will lead to meeting minimum SAP requirements in the near future.” If you face SAP dismissal from your Lone Star College campus because of low grades, incomplete courses, or delays in graduation caused by extenuating circumstances, then promptly take an SAP appeal.

Representation for Lone Star College System SAP Appeals

A winning SAP appeal, though, requires more than a simple email or letter to your Lone Star College financial aid office. Lone Star College's SAP appeal process requires that you and your attorney advisor representative complete the college's SAP appeal form, provide “[s]upporting documentation of the mitigating or extenuating circumstances,” along with a “statement explaining the reasons for not making satisfactory academic progress, and what has changed in the student's situation that will allow the student to demonstrate satisfactory academic progress at the next evaluation.” You must, in other words, make a documented and compelling presentation including an achievable remediation plan. Few community college students have the knowledge, skills, and experience, not to mention the time and energy, to make such a presentation, especially when they are already behind and below standards in their academic work. Retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento for your winning SAP appeal. Gaining reinstatement isn't your only challenge. You need a solid remediation plan. Lone Star College's SAP policy lists these typical grounds justifying relief from SAP standards:

personal or family illness;
death of a close family member;
traumatic assault, abuse, or other personal violation;
job loss;
natural disaster such as flood, fire, earthquake, tornado, or hurricane;
military deployment;
motor vehicle or other serious accident; or
divorce, separation, incarceration, or other serious legal issues.

Individual Lone Star College System Resources

Individual Lone Star College campuses do not publish their own student conduct codes or disciplinary procedures. They instead rely, at least officially, on the Lone Star College System board's above system-wide policies. In that respect, the Lone Star College System is more centralized than some other community college systems. Some other systems permit, encourage, or require the local campus to publish and follow its own disciplinary procedures. But Lone Star College System campus officials may nonetheless implement system-wide procedures following their own local customs and practices. Campus officials may also make their own judgments about reporting and advocating disciplinary charges. Your relationship with campus instructors, staff members, and administrative officials can be important to your matter's outcome. Here are a few examples of local Lone Star College System campus resources that could affect disciplinary charge outcomes:

LSC-Cyfair maintains student success and academic advising services for struggling students;
LSC-Houston North maintains a mentoring program, student resource office, and academic advising services to support and guide students;
LSC-Kingswood offers academic advising, counseling services, tutoring and study skill services, and a women's center for student support;
LSC-Montgomery offers childcare, healthcare, a wellness center, a food pantry, tutoring, counseling services, and diversity and inclusion programs;
LSC-North Harris maintains a student life and wellness center, successful transfer center, student success institute, and counseling services;
LSC-Tomball offers an extended learning and tutoring center, transfer center, student engagement program, and advising services; and
LSC-University Park offers counseling services, school communities, and a student success institute.

Forecasting Lone Star College System Discipline

The above sections share a lot of information about Lone Star College System discipline policies and procedures. The substantive policies and the particular procedures can be important to the outcome of Lone Star College System discipline cases. But each case tends to rise and fall on its own factual merits or demerits. Your winning defense against Lone Star College System disciplinary charges depends more on the specific facts and circumstances of your case, and your individual character, commitments, and school record, than on the system-wide policies and procedures. The outcome of your discipline case can also depend on your relationship to and reputation with instructors, staff members, administrators, and student peers. Don't assume from anything you read or hear about discipline cases in general that the outcome of your case is assured, one way or the other, unsuccessfully with discipline or successfully with the dismissal of the disciplinary charges. Instead, retain national school discipline defense attorney Joseph D. Lento to help you evaluate your disciplinary charges in the full context of your facts and circumstances. Attorney advisor Lento has the knowledge, skill, and experience to do better for you in terms of a disciplinary outcome than you, your school's officials, and your family and friends may think.

Lone Star College System Sexual Misconduct Charges

Community colleges, like other higher education institutions, also charge students with sexual misconduct. The Lone Star College System campuses are no exception. Indeed, to receive essential federal funding, the Lone Star College System must adopt and implement a Title IX sexual misconduct policy and procedures meeting federal Title IX regulations. The Lone Star College System board's Policy Manual Section IX.A. is the System's Sexual Misconduct Policy satisfying Title IX requirements. That policy prohibits the following forms of sex discrimination, as Title IX law and regulations define them:

dating violence when the accuser and accused are dating, have dated, or have or have had a sexual relationship, including intentionally inflicting or attempting to inflict physical injury or placing the other in fear of physical harm, physical restraint, or malicious damage to personal property;
domestic violence involving felony or misdemeanor domestic violence or family violence crimes the victim's current or former spouse or intimate partner, a person with whom the victim shares a child, a person who is cohabiting or has cohabited with the victim as a spouse or intimate partner, or a person similarly situated to a spouse of the victim, commits against the victim;
sexual assault involving rape, touching the private body parts of a non-consenting, underage, or mentally incapacitated person for sexual gratification, incest between persons related to one another within degrees marriage laws prohibit, or statutory rape with a person under the age of consent;
sexual harassment involving either the quid-pro-quo form, conditioning an educational aid, benefit, or service on participation on unwelcome sexual conduct or the hostile environment form involving unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature a reasonable person would consider so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies the victim equal access to the education program or activity; and
stalking involving a course of conduct directed at the victim that would cause a reasonable person to fear for safety or suffer substantial emotional distress, and involving two or more acts in which a person follows, monitors, observes, surveils, threatens, or communicates with or about another person, or interferes with another's property.

Lone Star College System Sexual Harassment Charges

Sexual harassment can be the most common and contentious form of college or university Title IX disciplinary charges. The Lone Star College System board's Policy Manual Section IX.A. prohibits sexual harassment using the federal Title IX definition given above. But Lone Star College's Title IX sexual misconduct policy also lists detailed examples of the kinds of conduct that students can consider to be harassing, for which the college may discipline. Many schools do not list such clear and detailed examples. Lone Star College's examples, though, show the broad potential reach of Title IX sexual misconduct prohibitions, covering much behavior that some students might regard as innocent and inoffensive. Those prohibited forms of sexual harassment include:

physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person's will or when a person is incapable of giving consent because of drug or alcohol impairment or mental or physical disability;
direct or implied sexual statements or threats, demands for sexual favors, or sexual advances, accompanied by implied or actual promises of preferential treatment for submission to such demands;
implied or actual threats that failure to submit to demands may result in adverse treatment concerning the student's admission, enrollment, employment, work status, promotion, grades, or recommendation;
persistent and unwelcome flirtation, requests for dates, staring, advances, or sexual propositions;
gratuitous displays of sexually suggestive objects or pictures, including images displayed, transferred, forwarded, or shared via the Internet, text messaging, or other electronic means;
a pattern of conduct unrelated to an academic course or the requirements of the workplace intended to cause discomfort or humiliation or including comments of a sexual nature, sexually explicit statements, questions, jokes, anecdotes, or gestures;
a pattern of conduct that would cause discomfort or humiliation, or both, to a reasonable person to whom the conduct is directed and that includes unnecessary touching, such as patting, pinching, hugging, or repeated brushing against a person's body, remarks of a sexual nature about a person's clothing or body, or remarks about sexual activity or speculations about previous sexual experience; and
treating individuals adversely because they do not conform to stereotypical norms of feminine or masculine gender behavior.

Lone Star College System Sexual Misconduct Procedures

The Lone Star College System board's Policy Manual Section IX.A. also includes the Title IX sexual misconduct disciplinary procedures that system campuses should follow when determining charges and sanctions. Sexual misconduct complaints go to the college's Police Department, Title IX Coordinator, or Chief Student Services Officer. The Title IX Coordinator or designee then does an intake assessment that may include interviewing witnesses. If the assessment supports that Title IX sexual misconduct may have occurred, the coordinator or designee notifies the accused student and investigates the allegations. The investigation must be impartial. The Title IX coordinator or designee may resolve the matter during the investigation if all parties agree. The coordinator or designee produces a written report for the accused student's review and comment. If the report indicates that sexual misconduct may have occurred and recommends a sanction, the coordinator must schedule a hearing before a third-party hearing officer. Title IX hearings at a Lone Star College System campus include:

reasonable notice of the time, date, and place of the hearing;
an independent hearing officer the college selects;
the accused student's right to present witnesses at the hearing;
the accused student's right to have an attorney at the hearing;
the accused student's right to submit cross-examination questions;
a written decision including the result, rationale, and any sanctions;
a right of appeal to the System's chancellor.

Lone Star College System Sexual Misconduct Representation

You need not and should not conduct your Title IX sexual misconduct disciplinary hearing on your own. You need skilled and experienced attorney advisor representation. The Lone Star College System board's Policy Manual Section IX.A. expressly authorizes a student accused of Title IX sexual misconduct to retain an attorney advisor to participate in the disciplinary proceeding: “Parties have the right to consult with an advisor of their choosing. The advisor may be any person, including an attorney, who is not otherwise a party or witness involved in the investigation. A party may be accompanied by his or her advisor to any meeting or proceeding related to a complaint under this policy. While the advisor may provide support and advice to the party at any meeting or proceeding, the advisor may not speak on the party's behalf or otherwise participate in, or in any manner delay, disrupt, or interfere with any meeting and or proceeding.” The skilled preparation, communication, negotiation, and other advocacy of national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento can make a difference in the outcome of your Title IX sexual misconduct charges.

Lone Star College System Alternative Special Relief

Don't give up on your defense and give in to discipline, even if you have exhausted all formal Lone Star College System disciplinary procedures. From having successfully represented hundreds of students nationwide in school discipline matters, premier school discipline defense attorney Joseph D. Lento has earned a national reputation and developed a national network with school general counsel offices, outside retained counsel, ombuds offices, and other similar oversight channels. Oversight officials ensure that the school reduces its litigation, liability, and regulatory risks. Oversight officials can, in appropriate cases, reverse student discipline and reinstate students to their educational program. Attorney advisor Lento has helped many students gain reinstatement to their school program by advocating and negotiating with those oversight officials. Those officials trust and respect attorney advisor Lento for this knowledge, skill, diplomacy, and insight into school discipline cases. Schools generally don't want to suspend and expel students, especially access schools like the Lone Star College System campuses. Attorney advisor Lento shows school officials how reinstatement is in every party's best interest, in this case, fulfilling the mission and goals of an access school. Attorney advisor Lento may be able to give Lone Star College System oversight officials sound reasons for your reinstatement, even if you have already lost in all formal proceedings.

Premier Defense Services for Lone Star College Charges

National school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's student defense team are available to defend and defeat Lone Star College System disciplinary charges. Attorney advisor Lento is a premier school discipline defense attorney advisor with unparalleled skills and experience. He has also built the Lento Law Firm's student defense team specifically to meet the special needs of students facing behavioral, academic, professional, and sexual misconduct charges. You have too much at stake in your Lone Star College System education to do anything less than retain the best representation. Disciplinary dismissal can mar your academic record, closing doors to further education, licensure, certification, jobs, and careers. Don't attempt to represent yourself through the college's complex disciplinary procedures. And don't retain an unqualified local criminal defense attorney who doesn't know school laws, rules, and procedures. Instead, get the skilled and experienced representation you need. Attorney advisor Lento has successfully represented hundreds of students facing serious disciplinary charges nationwide, at community colleges and all other educational levels. Attorney advisor Lento is available for winning defense representation no matter your major program, grades, credits earned, or the alleged grounds for discipline. Call 888-535-3686 for a consultation now, or use the online service.

Lone Star College System Misconduct Charges