Chaminade University of Honolulu Student Defense Lawyer

Chaminade University of Honolulu is a private Catholic institution founded in 1955 under the guidance of Marianists, operating on Oʻahu with five degree-granting schools and undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs spanning the humanities and fine arts, the sciences and mathematics, behavioral sciences, business and communication, education, and nursing. It is small enough that a student in trouble is usually known to the people deciding the case, and that cuts both ways. Students reach me after an academic integrity referral, after a conduct charge, or after a program — most often nursing or a licensure-track program — tells them that continued enrollment is under review.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Chaminade?

Chaminade is private, which means the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply and there is no constitutional due process claim available. The governing framework is contractual. The student handbook, the academic catalog, the academic honesty policy, and the program’s own progression standards are the promise the university made, and the question is whether it kept that promise — whether it gave the notice it published, applied the standard it wrote, and afforded the review it described. That is a narrower theory than a public-university student has, but the documents at a school this size are specific, and a school that publishes a procedure is expected to follow it. See breach of contract against universities.

Federal law applies regardless of the university’s private status. Title IX reaches Chaminade as a recipient of federal funding, FERPA governs its education records, and Section 504 and the ADA govern accommodations. Those statutes often supply the strongest arguments in a private-school case, because they do not depend on how the handbook was drafted.

Where do Chaminade cases come from?

Academic integrity referrals are the most common, and increasingly they rest on similarity or AI-detection reports generated on submissions in online and hybrid courses rather than on anything an instructor observed directly. Group work and permitted tutoring produce a second cluster, generally where the syllabus was less specific than the referral assumes.

The nursing program is the highest-stakes source. Progression and clinical decisions there are treated as academic, which means they receive more deference and often carry a narrower appeal, and they reach the licensure process later. Clinical evaluations in nursing are also frequently written in professionalism terms even when the underlying problem was scheduling, supervision, placement, or an accommodation that was approved but never actually delivered — a distinction worth drawing directly in any response. Education and other licensure-track programs generate similar placement and practicum issues. Ordinary conduct matters arise from residence life and campus incidents.

Which process are you in, and why does that matter?

Academic integrity, student conduct, Title IX, and program progression are separate tracks at Chaminade, with different decision-makers, deadlines, and appeal rights, and different rules about whether an advisor may attend or speak. In Title IX matters, federal regulations guarantee each party an advisor of choice — who may be a lawyer — even where the ordinary conduct process would exclude counsel. Identify your track before responding: academic misconduct, student conduct, Title IX, or nursing school dismissal.

What should you do first?

Get the current student handbook, academic honesty policy, and — if you are in nursing, education, or another licensure-track program — the program handbook, from the university’s own site rather than from any summary, including this one. Confirm which catalog edition governs your cohort, because progression standards change between classes. Then calendar the deadline in writing, request your file, and preserve your drafts, submission history, clinical or practicum evaluations, accommodation correspondence, and messages before that record is gone. Do not sit for an interview or submit a written account before you understand what the university claims to have.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
• Testing whether Chaminade 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. At a small private university the conduct code may permit an advisor of choice, or it may permit only a member of the campus community, and progression committees frequently exclude outside participants entirely. Reading the current policy is the first step, and asking the office directly, in writing, is worth doing where the policy is silent.

Common questions about Chaminade student cases

The university is religiously affiliated. Does that change the rules that apply to it?

Not in the way students often assume. A religiously affiliated private university is still bound by the contract it wrote — its handbook and catalog — and federal statutes still reach it in specific areas. What a mission-based institution’s handbook may include is language about values, community standards, or expectations of conduct, and where a charge rests on that kind of provision, the analysis focuses on what the language actually says and whether the university applied it consistently.

I am in the nursing program and failed a clinical. Is that discipline?

Generally it is treated as an academic decision rather than a disciplinary one, which means more deference and often a shorter, narrower appeal. It also reaches further than a course failure, because licensure applications ask about program separations. Responding to it as though it were an ordinary conduct case tends to spend the one appeal available on the wrong argument.

Everyone here knows about it already. Does that matter to the process?

It matters practically. In a small campus community, interim measures and informal conversations can shape a case before any formal decision is made, and what a student says casually to an advisor or instructor may end up in the file. Putting requests and answers in writing, and asking what is being recorded and where, is worth doing from the first contact. See FERPA and education records.

Related Hawaii pages: University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, Hawaiʻi Pacific University, and Brigham Young University–Hawaii. The statewide overview is at Hawaii student defense, and the flat-fee Full Read + Game Plan 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 licensed in Florida, admitted to the federal district courts in Florida, Colorado, northern and southern Illinois, Nebraska, New Mexico, and western Wisconsin, and not licensed in Hawaii; Hawaii 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.