Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design Student Defense Lawyer

Students reach me about Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design at three points: when an instructor turns a studio or portfolio submission into an academic integrity referral, when a conduct letter arrives from the college, and, usually too late, after a satisfactory academic progress decision has already cut off aid. Each carries a short clock, and each is decided on a written record built early.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design?

RMCAD is a private, for-profit institution, owned by Rocky Mountain College LLC. That decides the shape of your case. A private college is not a state actor, so there is no Fourteenth Amendment claim against it. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), 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), set the floor at public campuses and do not reach RMCAD. What reaches RMCAD is contract, the federal civil rights statutes, and its accreditors’ requirements.

Colorado’s leading authority is University of Denver v. Doe, 2024 CO 27, decided 6 May 2024. The Colorado Supreme Court held that a private university’s promise of a thorough, impartial and fair investigation, read together with the specific investigative requirements in its own procedures, is definite enough to be an enforceable contract, and revived claims for breach and for breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. In the same decision the Court held that a university does not owe its students an extra-contractual duty to exercise reasonable care in adopting and implementing fair procedures. The court of appeals decision below, Doe v. University of Denver, 2022 COA 57, keeps its contract holding; its tort-duty holding is no longer good law. In Colorado the viable theory against a private institution is contract, not negligence, and the more specific the college’s written promise, the stronger the claim.

Colorado statute adds almost nothing here. There is no general campus due-process statute, no right to counsel, no hearing right and no prescribed standard of proof for ordinary conduct or academic cases. C.R.S. § 23-5-106, which lets governing boards make rules for their institutions, speaks to state institutions and not to a for-profit college. The one place Colorado prescribes procedure is sexual misconduct: C.R.S. § 23-5-146 reaches state institutions, participating private institutions, local district colleges and area technical colleges. Whether it reaches RMCAD turns on whether the college participates, which is a fair question to put to the college in writing at the start of a case.

Where do Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design cases come from?

RMCAD enrolls about 2,061 students from a campus at 1600 Pierce Street in Lakewood, in the Denver metropolitan area, and it has run online degrees for more than a decade, so a large share of its students never set foot on that campus. It offers bachelor’s degrees in animation, art education, fashion design, fine arts, game art, graphic design, illustration, illustrative design, interior design and photography, with music production online, plus a digital photography certificate.

That mix produces a distinctive caseload. At an art and design college the academic integrity question is rarely copied prose; it is attribution and authorship. Reference images, stock assets, borrowed rigs and textures, tutorials followed closely, work carried over from another course, and now generative image and audio tools all raise the same question of where the student’s own authorship began. Because so much of the teaching is online, the evidence is almost entirely digital: learning management timestamps, file version history, layered source files and cloud sync records.

The second pressure point is money. A for-profit college that participates in federal student aid must apply satisfactory academic progress standards, and studio courses are sequenced, so one failed or dropped term can trigger an aid suspension and a registration or transcript hold at the same time as a conduct file. Those are separate problems with separate deadlines, and students routinely appeal one and miss the other.

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

The label on the letter picks your deadline, your decision-maker and your protections. An instructor’s report about authorship is academic misconduct. A behavioral allegation runs through the code of conduct. Sexual misconduct runs through the college’s Title IX route. An aid or completion problem is not discipline at all: it runs on the satisfactory academic progress appeal track, with its own form and its own clock.

Answering in the wrong track can spend the only chance you get to be heard. A message to an instructor that reads as an apology often becomes an admission in the conduct file. If the accusation rests on an AI-detection score, a similarity percentage or an image-provenance tool, treat it as an evidence problem about software first, because those tools carry error rates that the college is unlikely to put in the letter.

What should you do first?

Get the catalog. At RMCAD the catalog is the contract, and after University of Denver v. Doe the specific procedural promises inside it are the most valuable thing you own. The college’s policies page does not carry the code; it points to the catalog. Ask the registrar or the dean of students, in writing, for a copy of the catalog sections in force on your incident date, and keep the response.

Then collect the coursework record: the syllabus, the assignment brief, the rubric, any written instruction about reference material, stock assets, collaboration or generative tools, and your own layered files and version history. Put every deadline in writing, in an email back to the office that set it. Preserve cloud sync logs, learning management timestamps, submission receipts and group chats before anything auto-deletes. Do not sit for an interview before you know what is actually alleged.

What does Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design’s own policy actually say?

Less than a student needs, on the pages the college makes readable. The list below separates what RMCAD publishes from what it does not.

• Conduct office: the RMCAD student code of conduct policies page, which states that the code and the conduct process are designed to create a responsible intellectual community and directs students to the catalog for the code itself. It names no conduct officer. No campus-specific conduct office located, so ask in writing who will decide your case.
• Governing policy: the RMCAD Student Code of Conduct, published inside the RMCAD academic catalog. No Colorado system procedure governs RMCAD. It is a for-profit institution, not a member of the Colorado Community College System, so CCCS SP 4-30a does not apply here.
• Academic integrity: carried in the catalog with the rest of the academic policies. No campus-specific academic integrity procedure located on the readable pages; request that catalog section by name.
• Appeal window: no campus-specific day-count located. Colorado prescribes none for ordinary conduct or academic cases, so the college’s own catalog supplies the clock. Ask for the deadline the day the decision arrives, in writing, and file early rather than at the edge.
• Standard of proof: no campus-specific standard of proof located. In a sexual misconduct case, if RMCAD is a participating institution under C.R.S. § 23-5-146, subsection (3)(d)(II) requires preponderance of the evidence when a student is the respondent, notwithstanding any other evidentiary standard in any other policy.
• Advisor: no campus-specific advisor rule located, so confirm in writing whether you may bring one, whether that person may be a lawyer, and whether they may speak. Where C.R.S. § 23-5-146(3)(d)(IV) applies, an advisor or other person may be present but is not allowed to speak on behalf of either party, which means an attorney may attend and must stay silent.
• Academic standing: published in the RMCAD academic catalog. That catalog is served through a filter that turns back automated requests, so the standing rules could not be verified from the published page. No campus-specific grade point average threshold and no appeal day-count located; request them in writing.
• Disability accommodations: Student Accessibility Services.

The access problem deserves a plain statement. RMCAD’s catalog link resolves in an ordinary browser but is blocked to automated retrieval, so link checkers, archives and saved copies often fail on it, and the college’s own summary pages do not reproduce the code. Ask for a dated PDF of the operative sections and keep the reply, because a link a student cannot reliably open is not adequate published notice of the rules being applied to them. If a hold has already been placed on your account, that is a separate problem covered under transcript holds and registration blocks.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design — Title IX, Title VI, or Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, where I am admitted to the bar, so no pro hac vice motion and no sponsoring local attorney is needed. Because RMCAD is private and not a state actor, there is no Fourteenth Amendment claim, and the contract claim built on the catalog is a state-law claim reviewed under University of Denver v. Doe. Most cases never reach court. The work that decides them is this:

• 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 can do in the room turns on a policy RMCAD does not publish where you can read it, which is itself a reason to ask before the meeting rather than after. It also shapes the case: where the college cannot show you the procedure it applied, the gap between the promise and the practice is the argument. Once a decision is final, the questions become the record and the grounds, covered under appeals and court review.

Other Colorado 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 Colorado colleges:

• Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts
• Colorado College
• Colorado Mountain College
• Colorado School of Mines
• Colorado School of Trades
• CSU Pueblo

Common questions about Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design student cases

Where is the RMCAD student code of conduct published?

In the RMCAD academic catalog, not on the college website. The policies page says only that the code and the conduct process are designed to create a responsible intellectual community, then points to the catalog. The catalog link opens in an ordinary browser but is blocked to automated retrieval, so archives and link checkers frequently fail on it. Ask the registrar or dean of students in writing for a dated copy of the sections in force on your incident date, and keep the reply.

Does Colorado law give me a hearing at RMCAD?

No. Colorado has no general campus due-process statute, no right to counsel and no prescribed hearing right for ordinary conduct or academic cases, and RMCAD is a private for-profit college rather than a state actor. Your rights come from the catalog, enforced as a contract under University of Denver v. Doe, 2024 CO 27. The one statutory exception is sexual misconduct under C.R.S. section 23-5-146, and whether that reaches RMCAD depends on whether the college participates.

What standard of proof does RMCAD use in a conduct case?

No campus-specific standard of proof located. The readable college pages do not state one, and the catalog that carries the code cannot be retrieved automatically, so ask in writing which standard the decision-maker will apply and keep the answer with your file. The one point of certainty is statutory: in a sexual misconduct case at a participating institution, C.R.S. section 23-5-146(3)(d)(II) requires preponderance of the evidence when a student is the respondent.

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 Colorado 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 Colorado and does not advise on Colorado state law.