You’re in a very particular position. You were accused of a disciplinary misconduct offense at CUNY Baruch. You dealt with an investigation, you endured a hearing, and ultimately, you were found responsible for that offense. Now you’re facing a serious sanction—suspension or dismissal. What do you do at this point. 

There are ways to continue the fight. You can file an appeal, for example, and you can try negotiating directly with the college’s administration. You can’t continue to do this head-on, though, the way you have up to this point. Your circumstances have changed, and your success is largely dependent on your ability to adapt to the new situation. 

The LLF National Law Firm can help you do that. Our Student Defense Team was founded to protect student rights, and we’ve helped hundreds of students challenge disciplinary misconduct allegations. We know how CUNY Baruch works, including what’s involved in filing an appeal. We’ll go over that process below, but the most important thing you can do for your case right now is to contact the LLF National Law Firm.

It’s important you contact us quickly. CUNY Baruch provides you just fifteen days in which to file your appeal, and there’s a lot to do. 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

CUNY Baruch follows the City University of New York (CUNY) system bylaws when it comes to disciplinary procedures. Here’s what those procedures have to say about the process for filing your appeal.

  • Your first job is to write the appeal itself. More on that below.

  • Once you’ve written your appeal, you submit it to the college president for review. Again, you need to do this within fifteen days of receiving notification of the hearing outcome.

  • The president then notifies the other party to the case. This party has fifteen days to provide a written response to your appeal.

  • Finally, the president then has fifteen days in which to review all materials and render a final decision.

Writing Your Appeal

As you would expect, the toughest part of an appeal is writing it. In part, that’s simply because so much rests on the clarity and precision of your writing. You won’t get a chance to make your case in person, at a hearing. You can’t cross-examine witnesses. You can’t clarify any points that might be confusing.

More importantly, though, writing your appeal requires you to completely reconceptualize your case. At the most fundamental level, you are no longer “innocent” of your offense. The biggest mistake you can make is to go on arguing for your innocence and presenting evidence to support your innocence. That issue has already been decided, at least for the moment.

Appeals are about something entirely different: whether the disciplinary system worked properly, whether you were given a fair chance to defend yourself. That means your central argument has to shift. You have just three options.

  • You can argue that the college followed its own procedures in prosecuting your case. Were you given enough time to prepare your defense? Did decision-makers listen to all reasonable evidence? Did decision-makers have an unfair bias against you? A mistake like this warrants a brand-new hearing.

  • You can argue that a new piece of evidence deserves to be considered. The president won’t reevaluate your case in light of this evidence, but they should order a new hearing, so you can present it.

  • You can argue that the sanction imposed in your case is more severe than the nature of your offense merits.

As you’re constructing your argument, you also need to think carefully about evidence. At the hearing, you didn’t need evidence. You may have provided some, but you had the presumption of innocence. That means it was entirely the college’s responsibility to come up with material to overcome that presumption.

This time around, you bear the “burden” in the case.  You’re accusing the college of some error in procedure. The college has the presumption of innocence. It’s your job to come up with something from the record to overcome that presumption.

In short, you’re at a disadvantage this time around. That doesn’t mean you should give up. The appeals process exists to correct mistakes, and colleges make a lot of mistakes when it comes to dispensing justice. If you were mistreated in any way, you deserve the opportunity to re-present your case. The LLF National Law Firm will do everything we can to help you get that opportunity.

Direct Negotiations

There is another option open to you if you’ve been found responsible for a serious offense at CUNY Baruch. You can approach the college’s administration directly and try to negotiate a fair and reasonable settlement. 

The approach presents its own challenges, though. As with your appeal, you’re going to need a strong argument. Just as importantly, you’re going to need some means of convincing the administration to talk with you. Most college presidents are reticent to second-guess their disciplinary systems.

The LLF National Law Firm can give you those means. We maintain relationships with OGC (Offices of General Counsel) around the country. These are attorneys who work for colleges and universities. It’s their job to provide schools with legal advice, and if an OGC recommends that a school official negotiate, you can be sure that the school official will negotiate.

We’ve had success in the past in convincing school presidents to reduce sanctions. In other cases, we’ve helped our clients get their offenses removed from their transcripts. We’ve even managed to get cases entirely dismissed. We can do this because we work so extensively in the field of student defense. It’s an option you just won’t get with other law firms.

Trust the LLF National Law Firm

Whether you’re entirely innocent or simply looking to get fair treatment from CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College, 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.

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