You came here looking for answers. Let’s start with the most important one: yes, you have the right to appeal your “responsible” outcome at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Arizona.
You also need to know, though, that an appeal is never an easy prospect. You’ve been found responsible for an offense, and that changes everything about your case. Make no mistake: you can continue to defend yourself, and with the right argument and evidence, you can earn a new hearing or a reduced sanction. You’re going to need help, though.
The LLF National Law Firm’s Student Defense Team was founded to handle situations like yours. We’re experienced. We’ve worked with hundreds of students, protecting them from all types of disciplinary misconduct charges. We’re also informed. We know exactly how ERAU-Arizona processes and procedures work, and we can show you how to use your due process rights to your best advantage. Most importantly, though, we’re on your side. We understand exactly what’s at stake, and we’ll use every resource at our disposal to get you the best possible resolution to your case.
You must act quickly, though. You have days, not weeks, to file your appeal, and there’s a lot to be done. Don’t wait. Call the LLF National Law Firm today at 888-535-3686, or use our online questionnaire to tell us more about your situation.
Filing Your Appeal
Other than writing your appeal, the filing process at ERAU-Arizona is relatively straightforward. It’s important you follow the steps precisely, though. Failing to do so can mean the end of your case.
- Within two days of receiving notification of the outcome of your hearing, you must meet with the Dean of Students to let them know you plan to file an appeal.
- You then have two additional days to actually submit your appeal to the Dean of Students.
- Once you’ve done this, the Dean of Students will review your materials, including your arguments and your evidence. Note that there are no hearings in appeals cases.
- The Dean of Students then has three options. They can affirm the original decision. They can modify your sanction. They can order a new hearing. Whatever the outcome, their decision is final.
As this general outline suggests, most of your job is done once you’ve written your appeal and submitted it. It’s the writing part that’s the most difficult, though, so let’s turn to that next.
The Content of Your Appeal
From the outside, writing an appeal may not seem like much of a challenge. After all, you’ve already been through an investigation and a hearing. You came up with arguments and evidence, and you presented those in person. That can be nerve-wracking. There are advantages to hearings, though. Among other things, you can explain things in person. An appeal puts enormous pressure on your writing ability.
The bigger issue, though, is that the nature of your case has changed substantially. You’ve been found responsible for an offense. What that means is that you can’t simply go on arguing your innocence. The thing is, innocence arguments are relatively simple. Appeals are about whether the system worked the way it was supposed to. Those sorts of arguments can be far more subtle.
- You might argue, for example, that the university failed to follow its own procedures in your case. To do that, though, you need an intimate understanding of university policies and what constitutes “fairness” in the world of jurisprudence.
- You can assert that some new piece of evidence has come to light since your hearing and that this evidence deserves to be heard. You are not using this evidence to prove your innocence, though. Not at this point. You must also be able to prove this evidence wasn’t available at the time of your hearing and that it could alter the outcome of your case.
- You can argue that someone involved in your case had an obvious bias against you. You may also have to convince the Dean that this bias had an impact on the case outcome.
- You can argue that the sanction applied in your case is disproportionate to the nature of your offense. Here, you may need to provide evidence of how similar cases have been decided by the university.
The fact that you’ve been found “responsible” has other implications for your case as well. Remember that you were innocent until proven guilty before you went into your hearing. That’s the strongest possible position you could have been in. You didn’t actually have to provide any evidence to “prove” your innocence. Instead, the university bore the burden of proving your guilt.
Now the situation is reversed. In fact, the appeal instructions listed in the Code of Conduct literally caution that “appeals are deferential to the original hearing decision.” Put another way, you now bear the burden of coming up with enough evidence to demonstrate that it is “more likely than not” that you were denied a fair opportunity to defend yourself.
Disadvantages or no, you do have a good chance of winning an appeal. Colleges and universities are organized to educate. They’re not especially good at investigating and adjudicating misconduct. After all, you didn’t face a prosecuting attorney or a judge. Your case was in the hands of an administrator with minimal legal training.
You also have a secret weapon this time around. You have the LLF National Law Firm. We’ll go over the record of your case with a fine-tooth comb. If there are grounds for appeal, we’ll find them. We’ll help you draft the strongest possible appeal based on the most compelling evidence.
The Office of General Counsel
In fact, the LLF National Law Firm can do even more to help with your case. If you wind up losing your appeal, we can contact the ERAU-Arizona administration and ask them to intervene directly.
Don’t expect a local or family attorney to be able to do this. We can only do it because we work so extensively in the field of student defense, and over many years, we’ve developed relationships with the important players in university disciplinary systems.
The most important of these players is the Office of General Counsel. The OGC is made up of attorneys hired by the university to provide it with legal advice. As you might imagine, their opinions carry enormous weight on campus, and we speak their language.
If we can get an OGC to facilitate negotiations, we can ask the ERAU-Arizona administration to modify your sanction or order a new hearing. At a minimum, we can ask the university to remove the record of your offense from your transcript, which can allow you to transfer to another school and finish your degree. This is just one more reason why having the LLF National Law Firm on your side gives you your very best chance of salvaging your academic career.
Let the LLF National Law Firm Handle Your Case
Whether you’re entirely innocent or simply looking to get fair treatment from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, you owe it to yourself to continue the fight. The LLF National Law Firm’s Student Defense Team is here and ready to help. We’ll guide you through the entire appeals process, make sure your case is airtight, and guarantee the university respects your rights.
As we said in the beginning, though, you cannot afford to wait. There are deadlines for filing your appeal. Get started now. Contact the LLF National Law Firm at 888-535-3686 or use our online form.