Northern Arizona University Student Defense Lawyer
Northern Arizona University students usually contact me at one of two moments: when an instructor has filled out an academic integrity form and the student is deciding whether to sign it, or when a health-professions program has notified them that they are being removed from a clinical placement, remediated, or dismissed. The first looks small and often is not. The second looks fatal and often is not, provided the response is built before the appeal window closes. NAU is a public university headquartered in Flagstaff with programs distributed across sites in Yuma, Tucson, Prescott, Tuba City, the Phoenix Bioscience Core, and online, and that geographic spread creates its own set of problems when a student and the office deciding their case are in different cities.
Overview
NAU is public, which means the Fourteenth Amendment applies to disciplinary action. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), establishes the baseline: notice of what you are accused of and a meaningful opportunity to respond, with more required as the separation lengthens. On the academic side the courts pull back sharply. Under Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), and Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), an authentic academic judgment by faculty receives substantial deference. That difference is not academic in the colloquial sense; it decides what kind of argument is worth making. My due process at public institutions page develops the point.
NAU also sits under the Arizona Board of Regents. The Regents publish a system-wide Student Code of Conduct, ABOR Policy 5-308, with disciplinary procedures at ABOR-PM 5-401 through 5-404, and NAU’s own student code of conduct and student code of conduct procedures operate alongside them. NAU’s academic integrity policy is separate again, and it authorizes a range of instructor-imposed sanctions running from a written warning to a failing grade in the course, with the possibility that the same conduct is also referred under the student code. Two policies reaching the same conduct means two sets of procedural requirements, and both have to be satisfied.
Where NAU cases come from
Undergraduate integrity referrals in large courses and online sections are the highest-volume category, and the evidence is frequently a similarity report or an AI-detection output rather than anything a human observed. Conduct matters arise from residence halls, alcohol, and student organizations. The distinctive NAU cases, though, come out of the College of Health and Human Services, which houses athletic training, communication sciences and disorders, dental hygiene, health sciences, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and physician assistant studies. Several of those doctoral and master’s programs are delivered at the Phoenix Bioscience Core rather than in Flagstaff.
Health-professions matters follow different rules than undergraduate discipline. The operative documents are the program handbook, the technical standards, and the clinical evaluation policy, and the decision-maker is usually a progression or professional standards committee rather than a conduct officer. A failed rotation, a professionalism note, or a site’s request that a student not return can end a program placement without anything that resembles a hearing. Those matters are addressed on my clinical rotation and externship failures and nursing school dismissal pages.
Which process you are in matters
NAU separates academic integrity, student conduct, and academic progression, and the track determines your deadline, your decision-maker, and how much process you get. The academic integrity procedure contemplates that a student may accept the instructor’s finding and sanction, in which case the matter is recorded and no further review occurs. Accepting is a decision with consequences, and it should be made after reading the policy rather than in the meeting where it is offered. Conduct matters run under the student code and its procedures. Progression and dismissal decisions inside a health-professions program run under the program handbook.
Identify the track first: academic misconduct and honor code, student conduct, academic dismissal and suspension, or professionalism and fitness concerns. Where a disciplinary decision has been dressed as an academic one, saying so precisely and early is often the most valuable move in the case.
What to do first
Pull the current academic integrity policy, the student code of conduct and its procedures, and, if you are in a health-professions program, the handbook and technical standards in effect for your cohort, from NAU’s own site rather than from any summary, including this one. Policies are revised, and the version that governs is the one that applied to you. Read your syllabus and your clinical evaluation criteria alongside the policy.
Then calendar the deadline in writing, request your file, and preserve drafts, version history, messages, and evaluation forms before they are gone. Do not sit for an interview or give a written statement before you understand what the university claims to have. A separate charge for dishonesty during the process is a common addition in these systems, and it is often easier to prove than the underlying allegation.
What I can help with
- Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
- Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
- Testing whether the school followed its own published procedures
- Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
- Assisting with the written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
- Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
- Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language
What a lawyer may actually do in your case depends on that school’s policy. Some tracks allow counsel to participate, some allow a non-participating advisor, and some allow no outside person at all. Reading the current policy is the first step, and it determines what form the assistance can take.
Common questions
My instructor asked me to sign an academic integrity form. Should I?
Not before you read the policy and understand what signing does. In NAU’s academic integrity procedure, accepting the violation and sanction ends the matter without further review, and the acceptance is recorded. Students frequently sign because the sanction offered seems survivable, without appreciating that the record itself is the durable consequence, particularly for anyone applying to a graduate, health-professions, or licensing program later.
I am at the Phoenix Bioscience Core, not Flagstaff. Does that change anything?
Procedurally the university’s policies apply the same way, but distance has practical effects. The committee deciding your case, the office holding your file, and the resources your handbook references may sit on a different campus from the one you attend. When the handbook you were issued describes offices or steps that do not exist at your site, that gap is worth documenting rather than working around.
Can a clinical site remove me without a hearing?
A clinical or fieldwork site is not the university and does not run the university’s disciplinary process, but a site’s decision can effectively end a placement and trigger a program-level progression consequence. The question is what the program’s own policy requires once that happens: notice, an opportunity to respond, a remediation option, or a committee review. That is where the argument lives, and it is why the handbook matters more than the site’s email.
Other Arizona schools: University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Grand Canyon University. The full list is on the Arizona student defense index, and a flat-fee record review is described on the fees and scope of services page.
This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order.
This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.
Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is admitted in Florida and its federal courts, not in Arizona; Arizona matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, and association with local counsel or pro hac vice admission where required.