So, your school has suspended you for a semester for academic misconduct. You may be wondering if you have some way around the suspension, maybe like enrolling in another college or university for the suspension term and transferring those credits back to your own school when your suspension is over. Do you have a way around your suspension? The short answer is probably not. But with the help of an aggressive college academic misconduct defense attorney, you may have other relief available to you that will keep you on track toward graduation.

Suspension as the Default Response

Suspension is a common sanction for academic misconduct. Colleges and universities routinely authorize suspension for academic misconduct. See, for example, the Student Honor Code at the University of Florida. If disciplinary officials don't hear a good reason to do something other than suspending the student for a term, they tend to use suspension as their default response to findings of academic misconduct. That's why retaining a skilled and experienced college academic misconduct defense attorney can help avoid suspension. But what if you've already suffered suspension?

Losing a Semester or Two Can Hurt

No doubt, losing a semester or two to suspension can hurt. A suspension can mean that you won't graduate on the timetable you planned. You may not have time to make up all the credits you miss earning during the suspension term. Graduating later than planned can mean losing your housing or having to renew an apartment lease for another year. It can also mean losing a job opportunity or delaying marriage, moving, and other important plans. Another term of hanging around, waiting to finish school, often also means another term of foregone earnings, with increasing educational debt.

What Probably Won't Help

Transfer to another school for the suspension term, though, is probably not a viable option from both a technical and practical standpoint. First, transfer means leaving your current school to enter another school with the intention of pursuing your degree there. Here, though, you don't want to leave your current school but just go somewhere else to earn some credits to bring back. Schools call that a visiting student or guest student, not a transfer student. Colleges and universities have different policies for visiting students, like the Visiting Student Guidelines at Rice University. But those policies may well deny visiting status to a student who is seeking to avoid an academic misconduct suspension. And your own school may, in line with its reasons for your suspension, refuse to accept the credits you earn elsewhere as a visiting student when you try to bring those credits back.

Alternative Relief May Still Be Possible

Don't give up all hope, though, of avoiding the impacts of an academic misconduct suspension. You may have an appeal yet to take from your suspension available to you within your school's disciplinary procedures. You may also have alternative relief within your school from an oversight body, even if you have exhausted your appeal rights within the disciplinary procedures. College and university general counsel offices, ombudsman offices, and similar oversight bodies will sometimes correct an undue or overly harsh suspension, when a skilled and experienced academic misconduct defense attorney can show them why they should.

Hire a National Academic Misconduct Defense Attorney

If your college or university has suspended you for a semester for academic misconduct, retain premier national academic misconduct defense attorney Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm’s academic misconduct team to pursue all appeals and other alternative relief. Attorney Lento has helped hundreds of college and university students successfully overcome academic misconduct charges to keep their education on track. Call 888-535-3686 or go online now for the attorney help you need.