Carthage College Student Defense Lawyer

Students reach me about Carthage College at three points: when a faculty member reports an academic honesty problem, when the college opens a Community Code matter after an incident, and, usually too late, after an academic standing decision has been entered. All three run on short clocks, and at a private college all three are governed by one document rather than by any state rule.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Carthage College?

Carthage is a private, non-profit college. That single fact reorganizes the whole case. Carthage is not a state actor, so the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to it and there is no constitutional due-process claim to make. The promise the college owes you is the one it wrote down: the Community Code, the student handbook and the catalog. That is a contract theory, not a constitutional one, and it lives or dies on the exact words of the version in force on your incident date. What it promised about notice, who decides, what evidence it would gather and what appeal you would get is the standard it can be held to, which is why a breach of contract argument at a private college is really an argument about a document.

Federal law still reaches Carthage, because it takes federal funds. Title IX governs sex discrimination and sexual misconduct, Title VI governs race and national origin, and Section 504 and the ADA govern disability accommodations. Accreditor requirements sit on top of those. Those are the federal hooks, and they exist whether or not the Community Code mentions them.

What does not reach Carthage is Wisconsin’s campus-discipline machinery, and students routinely assume otherwise. Chapters UWS 14 and UWS 17 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code are Board of Regents rules. UWS 17.02(10) defines an “institution” as “any university, or an organizational equivalent designated by the board,” which means the thirteen University of Wisconsin universities and their branches. A private college is not one. So the ten-day right to request a hearing, the requirement that suspension or expulsion rest on clear and convincing proof, and above all the promise in UWS 17.12(4)(b) of “an advisor of the respondent’s choice. The advisor may be a lawyer” who, where suspension or expulsion is on the table, may question adverse witnesses and speak for the student, are not rights you hold at Carthage. Nor is there an administrative-review route: ch. 227 and its thirty-day petition clock in Wis. Stat. § 227.53(1)(a) apply to state agencies, and a private college is not an agency under § 227.01(1). Everything you get, you get from the Code.

Where do Carthage College cases come from?

Carthage enrolls roughly 2,844 students in Kenosha. It is a residential campus in a city, and that combination produces most of the conduct docket: incidents in residence halls, incidents at student organization events, and incidents that happen off campus entirely and come back as a campus charge.

That last category is worth stating plainly, because the Community Code says so. Carthage expects students “to abide by state laws, city ordinances, and college regulations both on and off campus,” states that “all violations of Carthage policies, state law or federal law are subject to sanction,” and provides that groups and organizations may be charged for what their members do. Two practical consequences follow. First, a citation or a charge in Kenosha County can generate a parallel campus case that moves faster than the criminal one and that will not wait for it. Second, what you say in the campus process is not sealed off from the criminal case, so the order in which you answer the two matters.

The academic docket looks different. Honesty referrals come heavily out of writing-intensive and online coursework, and a growing share start with a similarity score or an artificial-intelligence detection flag rather than anything a faculty member observed. Those tools report probabilities, not findings, and an AI accusation resting on a detector score alone is contestable on its own terms. At a private residential college the money makes the stakes worse than the sanction suggests: a suspension mid-year usually means tuition already spent, financial aid already disbursed, and a transfer conversation with a notation attached. That is why the length and timing of a sanction are usually more negotiable, and more important, than the finding itself.

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

The label on the letter picks your deadline, your decision-maker and your protections. A conduct code charge under the Community Code is a discipline matter that can reach suspension or expulsion. An academic honesty allegation is a finding about your integrity and is normally routed through the academic side of the college. A sexual misconduct complaint runs through the Title IX process, on its own timetable and with its own rules about advisors. Academic dismissal is none of those: it is a grade calculation, and no one is alleging that you did anything wrong.

Answering in the wrong track spends the only chance you get. An email to your professor about the assignment does nothing about a Community Code notice, and a procedural objection does nothing about a grade point average. Read the letter for three things first: which document it cites, who signed it, and what date it gives you. If it does not name the document, ask, in writing.

What should you do first?

Get the Community Code and the academic honesty policy in the version in force on your incident date, from the college itself rather than a summary, and read the appeal section before the conduct definitions. At a private college this is not housekeeping: the document is the whole legal theory, and a college that changed its code between your incident and your hearing has handed you an argument.

Put the dates in writing. Email the office that contacted you, confirm when you received the notice, and ask four questions: what deadline applies to you, who decides, what standard they will apply, and whether you may bring an advisor and whether that advisor may be an attorney. Keep the reply. Then collect the syllabus, the assignment instructions and any lab or studio policy, and preserve drafts, version history, repository commits, learning management timestamps and group chats before they are overwritten. Do not sit for a conduct meeting before you know what is alleged.

What does Carthage College’s own policy actually say?

Carthage publishes the scope of its Code clearly and publishes almost none of the procedure where a student can read it. This list says which is which rather than filling the gaps with a guess.

• Conduct office: the Community Code student conduct pages. The accessible pages set out the college’s authority and jurisdiction but do not name the administering office or the hearing body. No conduct office located; ask who owns your file in your first email.
• Governing policy: the Carthage Community Code, adopted by the college. There is no policy number, no state statute behind it and no system-wide code, because Carthage is private. Chapters UWS 14 and UWS 17 do not apply.
• Jurisdiction: broad and expressly stated. Students are expected “to abide by state laws, city ordinances, and college regulations both on and off campus,” groups and organizations may be charged for member conduct, and “all violations of Carthage policies, state law or federal law are subject to sanction.” Off-campus conduct is squarely within the Code.
• Academic integrity: handled on the academic side rather than under the conduct pages. No published academic honesty procedure could be located at a public URL. Ask the dean’s office which document governs and for a dated copy.
• Appeal window: no campus-specific day-count located, for conduct or for academic cases. Nothing in Wisconsin law supplies one for a private college, so ask in writing the day your letter arrives and treat the deadline as short until the college tells you otherwise.
• Standard of proof: no campus-specific standard of proof located. Because chs. UWS 14 and 17 do not apply, the clear-and-convincing floor that protects a UW student facing suspension or expulsion does not attach here by rule. Ask what standard the decision-maker will use.
• Advisor: no campus-specific advisor rule located. Whether you may bring an advisor, whether that advisor may be a lawyer and whether the advisor may speak are unanswered in the accessible pages, and none of it is supplied by state law. Confirm all three in writing before the meeting, not at the door, and ask separately about the Title IX track, where federal rules set their own advisor requirements.
• Academic standing: Carthage publishes its academic policies on its own site. No campus-specific academic warning, probation or dismissal thresholds and no reinstatement day-count could be verified from a public fetch of that page. Request the current text from the registrar and keep a dated copy.

A note on access, because it matters legally and not just practically. A college may write its own rules, but a rule a student cannot read is a weak foundation for a serious sanction. If the Code you are charged under is not available at a stable public address, say so in writing, ask for it, and keep the request. That exchange becomes part of the record.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at Carthage College — Title IX, Title VI, or Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, which covers Milwaukee and the eastern counties, including Kenosha County. I am admitted to the bar of the Western District of Wisconsin and handle Eastern District matters together with counsel admitted there. A contract claim on the Community Code is a state-law claim, and because Carthage is private there is no Fourteenth Amendment claim to bring. Almost none of these matters end in court. What decides them is the campus record:

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Preparing your account, your documents and your questions
• Testing whether the school followed its own published procedure
• Scrutinising software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
• Helping with the written response and the appeal, where policy allows
• Serving as your advisor where the process permits one
• Negotiating sanction terms, notations and disclosure language

What a lawyer may do in the room at Carthage is not published, which is itself the reason to ask before the meeting rather than after. Some tracks allow an advisor who may be an attorney, some allow a silent advisor, and some exclude outside people entirely. The current Code settles it, and nothing else does. Once a decision is final, the questions turn to the record and to whether the college followed what it wrote, which is the ground covered under appeals and court review.

Other Wisconsin colleges

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Wisconsin colleges:

• College of Menominee Nation
• Lakeshore College
• Milwaukee School of Engineering
• Nashotah House Theological Seminary
• Ripon College
• Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology

Common questions about Carthage College student cases

Does Carthage College have to give me due process?

Not in the constitutional sense. Carthage is a private college, not a state actor, so the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply and there is no constitutional due process claim. What Carthage owes you is what it promised in writing: the Community Code, the handbook and the catalog. That is a contract theory, and it turns on the exact wording of the version in force when your incident happened. In practice this makes the document more important at a private college, not less, because nothing outside it supplies a floor.

Can Carthage discipline me for something that happened off campus?

Yes. The Community Code says so directly. Students are expected to abide by state laws, city ordinances and college regulations both on and off campus, and all violations of Carthage policies, state law or federal law are subject to sanction. Groups and organizations may also be charged for what their members do. So a citation or a charge in Kenosha County can produce a parallel campus case, and that campus case will usually move faster than the criminal one and will not wait for it.

How long do I have to appeal a Carthage decision?

No campus-specific day-count could be located in the accessible pages, and Wisconsin law does not supply one for a private college. Chapters UWS 14 and 17 are Board of Regents rules and do not reach Carthage, and chapter 227 review is for state agencies. So treat the deadline as short until the college tells you in writing what it is. Ask the office that sent your letter for the appeal deadline, the decision-maker and the standard of proof, on the day the letter arrives, and keep the reply.

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. Other campuses are covered on the Wisconsin student defense page.

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 to practice law in Florida and is admitted to the bars of the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, the United States District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Illinois, the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico, and the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. Federal court admission is not a license to practice the law of the state in which the court sits; he is not licensed in Wisconsin and does not advise on Wisconsin state law.