Community College of Aurora Student Defense Lawyer

Students at the Community College of Aurora call at one of three moments: when an instructor reports academic dishonesty, when the Division of Student Success opens a conduct case, and, usually too late, after an academic standing decision. The three share a shape: the deadlines are short, they are not always published, and the written record that decides the case is built early.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Community College of Aurora?

CCA is a public two-year college, so the Fourteenth Amendment applies directly to what it does to you. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), requires notice and some kind of hearing before a suspension. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), holds that an academic dismissal gets far less process than a disciplinary one, so the label on your letter matters. Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), says a court defers to academic judgment unless the decision is “such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms as to demonstrate that the person or committee responsible did not actually exercise professional judgment.”

Colorado adds far less than students expect. There is no general student discipline due process statute. C.R.S. § 23-5-106 is the only general grant, and it runs the other way: governing boards may “promulgate rules and regulations necessary for the governance of the respective institutions.” Your procedural rights come from a board’s code, not a statute. CCA is one of the thirteen colleges of the Colorado Community College System, so one system code governs it: Board Policy BP 4-30 and System President’s Procedure SP 4-30a, the code itself at Appendix A. Academic standing runs under SP 9-80b. Colorado is not a right-to-counsel state for campus discipline, and there is no statutory hearing right, evidentiary standard or appeal right for an ordinary case.

The exception is sexual misconduct, where C.R.S. § 23-5-146 does prescribe procedure. Subsection (3)(d)(I) requires a process that is “fair, impartial, and prompt,” with a good-faith 60 to 90 day average. Subsection (3)(d)(II) requires the preponderance of the evidence where a student is the respondent, “notwithstanding any other evidentiary standard in any other policy.” Subsection (3)(d)(IV) gives an equal opportunity to have “an advisor or other person present … except that the advisor or other person is not allowed to speak on behalf of the complainant or responding party.” An attorney may attend. The statute bars the attorney from speaking for you. Two other provisions matter. C.R.S. § 23-5-124 imposes a mandatory 12-month suspension at a state-supported institution on a student convicted of inciting, arming or engaging in a riot, and “convicted” includes a guilty plea, a nolo plea or a deferred judgment and sentence — a trap for anyone taking a criminal plea deal. C.R.S. § 23-5-113.5 forbids withholding transcripts or diplomas, which matters if you face a transcript block.

Where do Community College of Aurora cases come from?

CCA enrolls roughly 8,833 students in Aurora, in the Denver metropolitan area. Most are doing one of two things: building transfer credit toward a four-year degree, or working through a career and technical program that ends in a credential, a licensure examination or a clinical placement. The same finding hits those groups very differently.

If you are in a health-science or other licensure-track program, a disciplinary record is the beginning of the problem rather than the end of it. A finding of academic dishonesty follows you into a readmission decision and onto a licensure application years later. Those programs are sequenced: a course runs once a year, prerequisites run in order, and clinical seats go by cohort, so a one-term separation is almost never one term. In practice it is a year, because the seat you left has been filled.

That is why the sanction is usually more negotiable, and more important, than the finding. A student who cannot win on the facts can still be arguing about whether the outcome is a failing assignment, a failing course or a separation, and about what a transfer application will be told. On that last point, C.R.S. § 23-5-106.5 bars a Colorado state institution from asking on an admission application about criminal history or disciplinary history at another institution, subject to the exceptions in subsection (3), and requires that applicants be told of their right to appeal a decision based on such information.

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

Read the letter for its label first. The label picks the deadline, the decision-maker and your protections. An instructor’s report of cheating or plagiarism starts an academic misconduct matter. A behavior report starts a conduct case under SP 4-30a. A sexual misconduct allegation goes to a separate Title IX grievance procedure, the one track where Colorado statute sets the standard of proof. A GPA produces an academic standing action under SP 9-80b, and a financial aid decision produces a satisfactory academic progress appeal on its own form and its own clock.

These run in parallel. Answering in the wrong track is the most common unforced error: an email to an instructor explaining a late submission does not answer a conduct charge. Because CCA is public, the due process floor applies to the conduct track. It does far less work in the academic standing track, which is where Horowitz bites.

What should you do first?

Get the current policy from the college’s own source and from the system procedure, not from a summary. You will be measured against the version in force on the date of the incident. Then collect the documents that fix the standard you were actually given: the syllabus, the assignment instructions, the rubric, the lab or clinical policy, and the proctoring rules.

Put the deadline in writing. Email the office that sent the letter, state the date you believe your response is due, ask for confirmation, and keep the reply. That matters more at CCA than at a college that publishes its clocks, because the campus page gives no day-count. Ask in writing for the file: the report, the evidence, and who decides. Preserve draft and version history, repository commits, learning management system timestamps, submission receipts, group chats and clinical evaluations. Do not sit for an interview until you know what is alleged.

What does Community College of Aurora’s own policy actually say?

What follows is what the college publishes at a public address. Where the page states nothing, this page says so rather than guessing. Confirm each item against the version in force when your matter starts.

• Conduct office: Student Conduct and College Guidelines. The college states that the Division of Student Success coordinates and facilitates the student conduct process.
• Governing policy: the Student Code of Conduct, which for a CCCS college is Board Policy BP 4-30 and System President’s Procedure SP 4-30a, the code itself at Appendix A. Academic standing runs under SP 9-80b.
• Academic integrity: academic dishonesty is a code violation under SP 4-30a, with the instructor’s academic consequence running alongside the conduct outcome. No separate academic misconduct procedure is published.
• Appeal window: no campus-specific day-count located. Neither the conduct page nor the catalog publishes one. Treat the date in your own notice as the deadline, confirm it in writing, and ask for the current SP 4-30a text, where the system’s appeal timing lives.
• Standard of proof: no campus-specific standard of proof located on the conduct page. In a sexual misconduct case where a student is the respondent, C.R.S. § 23-5-146(3)(d)(II) fixes it at the preponderance of the evidence “notwithstanding any other evidentiary standard in any other policy.”
• Advisor: no campus-specific advisor rule located, and Colorado grants no general right to counsel in campus discipline. In a sexual misconduct case, C.R.S. § 23-5-146(3)(d)(IV) allows an advisor to be present but provides that the advisor “is not allowed to speak on behalf of the complainant or responding party,” so an attorney may attend and may not speak for you.
• Academic standing: academic progress, CCA catalog. Below a 2.00 cumulative GPA the catalog uses Academic Alert under nine credits and Performance Support at nine or more. A student already on Performance Support, Returning Support or Performance Improving who earns a term GPA below 2.00 is suspended; suspensions are for one term only, and a successful appeal places the student on Returning Support.
• Disability accommodations: Office of Accessibility Services.

The campus conduct page is an orientation page: it tells you to “know the code” and points to the Student Success Guide rather than publishing the procedure, so the operative text is SP 4-30a. Ask the Division of Student Success in writing for the current guide and system procedure, and keep the response. A policy you cannot read in full is not adequate published notice.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at the Community College of Aurora — Title IX, Section 504 and the ADA, or Fourteenth Amendment due process — is filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, where I am admitted to the bar. In state court the route is narrow. Colorado’s Administrative Procedure Act does not reach these institutions, so review of a public college’s quasi-judicial decision runs through C.R.C.P. 106(a)(4) in district court, on the record, after exhaustion. Churchill v. University of Colorado at Boulder, 2012 CO 54, 285 P.3d 986, treats a governing board’s decision as “a quasi-judicial action functionally comparable to a judicial process,” which is what channels review there. No published Colorado appellate decision squarely reviews a public college’s discipline or academic dismissal decision; the state’s appellate line runs through University of Denver v. Doe, 2024 CO 27, a private-university contract case.

• 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 actually do turns on the college’s own policy. Some tracks allow an advisor who may be an attorney, some a silent advisor, and in a Colorado sexual misconduct case the statute itself keeps the advisor silent. Reading the current policy settles it, and that reading is the first thing I do in a Full Read + Game Plan. Other campuses in the state are covered on the Colorado student defense page.

Other Colorado community and state 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 community and state colleges:

• Community College of Denver
• Front Range Community College
• Lamar Community College
• Morgan Community College
• Pikes Peak State College
• Pueblo Community College

Common questions about Community College of Aurora student cases

Can my lawyer speak for me at a CCA hearing?

Colorado gives no general right to counsel in campus discipline, and CCA publishes no advisor rule. In a sexual misconduct case the answer is set by statute: C.R.S. § 23-5-146(3)(d)(IV) gives an equal opportunity to have an advisor or other person present, “except that the advisor or other person is not allowed to speak on behalf of the complainant or responding party.” An attorney may sit with you. The attorney may not argue for you. Ask in writing what the current code allows.

What standard of proof does CCA use?

The campus conduct page states none, so no campus-specific standard of proof is located here. The operative document is the system procedure, CCCS SP 4-30a, and you should ask for its current text. There is one fixed answer: in a sexual misconduct case where a student is the respondent, C.R.S. § 23-5-146(3)(d)(II) requires the preponderance of the evidence “notwithstanding any other evidentiary standard in any other policy,” so no campus policy can raise or lower it.

How long does an academic suspension at CCA last?

The catalog states that suspensions are for one term only. Suspension follows when a student already on Performance Support, Returning Support or Performance Improving earns a term GPA below 2.00. You are notified and given the opportunity to appeal; a successful appeal places you on Returning Support, and a later appeal must address why the earlier one did not work. No filing deadline is published, so treat the date in your notice as the deadline.

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 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.