Make no mistake: you’re in a serious situation. A “responsible” outcome after a university investigation and hearing is one step from the end of your academic career. Your case isn’t necessarily over just yet, though. You still have the right to file an appeal, and that can lead to a reduced sanction or an entirely new hearing.
You need to know, though, that appeals can be tricky. Most students don’t really understand how they work, and that can be the difference between success and failure.
You’re always better off having help when you take on a university like Long Island University. That’s especially true, though, when you’re filing an appeal, since this is your last chance to salvage your future. The best help out there? The LLF National Law Firm. Our Student Defense Team was specifically founded to protect student rights, and we’re familiar with all LIU processes and procedures, including what’s involved in filing appeals. Whatever your situation, we’re on your side and ready to use every resource at our disposal to get you the best possible resolution to your case.
One thing, though: it’s important you contact us quickly. You have just three business days in which to file, and there’s a lot to be done in that short timeframe. Call the LLF National Law Firm today at 888-535-3686, or use our online questionnaire to tell us more about your situation.
The Filing Process
The heavy lifting of an appeal takes place during the writing process. We’ll get into that below. Let’s start, though, with an overview of the filing process, since it’s relatively straightforward.
- Once you’ve written your appeal, you file it with the Dean of Students. Again, you must do this within the three-day window, or the Dean will reject it out of hand.
- The Dean reviews the contents of your appeal and renders a decision in a “timely manner.”
That’s it. Other than writing the appeal, your only real job is waiting to hear the results. Let’s take a closer look, though, at what you’ll need to consider as you draft your appeal.
The Content of Your Appeal
As a starting point, it’s important you recognize that there are no hearings in appeals cases. That means you don’t have to go through the trouble of preparing a presentation or coming up with questions for witnesses. However, it puts enormous weight on your writing skills. In addition, you should know that LIU doesn’t provide any forms or guidelines for the content of your appeal. Basically, you just formulate your arguments and support them with evidence.
Let’s talk about those arguments. Up to this point, you’ve been telling anyone who would listen that you’re entirely innocent of your offense. You can’t do that at this point. The fact is, you’ve been found responsible (guilty), and an appeal can’t undo that, at least by itself. Appeals aren’t about guilt or innocence. They’re about whether the disciplinary system worked the way it was supposed to. The central question of an appeal is whether you were given a reasonable chance to defend yourself.
In that context, LIU allows just three possible arguments.
- The university committed a procedural error that affected your ability to present a competent defense. For instance, perhaps you were never issued notice of the charges against you. Or maybe decision-makers refused to hear a key piece of evidence.
- You didn’t have access to all the facts in the case because some crucial piece of evidence hadn’t yet been uncovered. Now that you have it, you deserve a new chance to present your full case at the hearing.
- Decision-makers in the case assigned you a sanction that is grossly unfair. You don’t deserve a new hearing, but you do deserve an appropriate punishment.
Once you’ve established your argument, you’ll need to come up with concrete evidence to support it. You didn’t need evidence at your hearing, though you may have had some. In your original case, you were presumed “not responsible” (innocent). The university bore the burden of providing proof of your responsibility, and all you needed to do was raise questions about that “proof.”
You don’t have that presumption on your side anymore. Worse, the university does. You’re accusing it of mistreating you in some way, which means you now bear the burden of presenting a “preponderance of evidence” to overcome that presumption.
That’s definitely a higher bar than you were faced with during your original hearing. You can win your appeal, though. Plenty of students do every year. The purpose of an appeal is to identify and correct mistakes in the process, and you only need one mistake to justify a new hearing. The fact is, colleges and universities aren’t very good at matters of jurisprudence, and they tend to get things wrong more often than they get them right.
Don’t be shy about demanding justice. And remember that you have help this time around. Just having the LLF National Law Firm on your side can ensure LIU treats you fairly. But you can also count on us to identify your very best arguments and your most compelling evidence. We’re always in your corner and ready to fight for your rights.
One Last Option
In fact, we’re willing to fight beyond your appeal if it’s necessary. There is one more option to try before you give up your case entirely: you can ask the LIU administration to consider your situation and intervene on your behalf. This can sometimes result in a lighter sanction or even a new hearing. At a minimum, you can ask the university to remove your offense from your transcript, giving you a better chance at transferring to another school.
Before any of that can happen, though, you have to convince an administrator that it’s worth getting involved in your case.
Because we work so extensively in the field of student defense, the LLF National Law Firm has developed relationships with the important players in university disciplinary systems. That includes many of the attorneys who work in schools’ Offices of General Counsel. These attorneys provide universities with legal advice, and their opinions carry enormous weight. We are sometimes able to leverage our relationships with these officials to get our clients’ cases before university presidents.
We won’t give up until we’ve tried every possible avenue.
Fight for Your Future
Whether you’re entirely innocent or simply looking to get fair treatment from Long Island 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 you put forward your very strongest arguments, 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.