Everglades University Student Defense Lawyer

Students at Everglades University call at three moments: when an instructor reports cheating or plagiarism, when a Dean of Academic Affairs or Campus Vice President imposes discipline under the Standards of Conduct, and, usually too late, after an attendance or academic-progress dismissal. All three run on short clocks and turn on a written record built in the first week.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Everglades University?

Everglades is a private nonprofit university, and that single fact sets the frame. A private university is not a state actor, so the Fourteenth Amendment does not reach what it does to you and there is no constitutional due process claim to bring. Florida has said so for a century. John B. Stetson University v. Hunt, 88 Fla. 510, 102 So. 637 (1924), holds that the relation between a student and an institution of learning privately conducted is “solely contractual in character,” with “an implied condition that the student knows and will conform to the rules and regulations of the institution.” Your case is a contract case, and the contract is the catalog and enrollment agreement.

The second point is the one Florida students get wrong most often. Fla. Stat. § 1006.60(3) is a real statutory due process code — 7 business days’ written notice, disclosure of the evidence including exculpatory material 5 business days out, preponderance of the evidence with the burden on the institution, an appeal of right, and at § 1006.60(3)(g) the right to a “legal representative” at “any proceeding, whether formal or informal,” who “may directly participate in all aspects of the proceeding, including the presentation of relevant information and questioning of witnesses.” It reaches every Florida College System institution and every state university. It does not reach Everglades, and there is no certiorari petition to file because there is no state action to review. Your protections come from the catalog and nowhere else. The contrast is not abstract: Everglades lets you bring a lawyer to the hearing but forbids that lawyer from speaking, which is exactly what § 1006.60(3)(g) overrides at a public college.

The catalog is still worth enforcing, because Florida enforces private-school contracts with real money. In Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, 780 So. 2d 136 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000), a fourth-year osteopathic medical student was dismissed about two months before graduation over one failing rotation grade. A jury found the dismissal “arbitrary, capricious, and/or lacking any discernable rational basis,” and the Third District held his damages were not capped at tuition: lost future earning capacity is recoverable. On retrial a jury awarded $813,000 past and $3.5 million future lost earnings, affirmed in Nova Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, Inc. v. Sharick, 21 So. 3d 41 (Fla. 3d DCA 2009). The limits are real too. Tercier v. University of Miami, No. 3D22-1334 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug. 2, 2023), holds that “only specific promises … in a school’s bulletins, circulars[,] and handbooks, which are material to the student’s relationship with the school, are enforceable,” and Gamma Phi Chapter v. University of Miami, 718 So. 2d 910 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998), says a court will not engage until the internal process finishes. A breach of contract claim is built from steps Everglades wrote down and skipped.

Where do Everglades University cases come from?

Everglades enrolls roughly 3,240 students, most of them working adults, across a main campus in Boca Raton, branch campuses in Sarasota and Orlando, additional sites and an online division. Its degrees are professional and applied: aviation and aerospace, construction management, alternative and renewable energy management, environmental policy, business administration, healthcare and public health administration, crisis and disaster management, hospitality management, marine resources management and sustainability among them.

An adult, largely online student body changes what the cases look like. The most common route out of Everglades is not a hearing; it is attendance. The catalog says absences in excess of 25 percent of class hours “may cause a student to be ineligible to take the final examination in that subject,” that tardiness is docked against the same 25 percent, and that excessive absences “may also result in the following administrative actions: academic warning, probation, student suspension, student termination and cancellation or termination of student financial aid.” For a student holding down a job, that arithmetic does most of the damage before any policy question is reached.

The academic integrity ladder has a feature worth knowing before you answer a first allegation. Sanctions run F on the assignment, then F in the course, then dismissal, and the catalog says “[a]ll progressive disciplinary measures described above are cumulative throughout the program and not limited to occurrences within a specific course or term.” A minor first finding in year one is what makes a second finding in year three fatal, which is why a first allegation deserves a real response rather than an apology. A separate Professional Behavior Policy runs on written warning, final written warning and program dismissal through an Administrative Action, and that is where a professionalism finding lives.

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

The label on the letter picks the decision-maker, the deadline and the protections, and Everglades runs several tracks. Classroom discipline starts with the faculty member, then the Dean of Academic Affairs, then the Campus Vice President; conduct outside the classroom starts with the Dean. A satisfactory-academic-progress dismissal is a status decision reviewed through a written appeal. A Professional Behavior problem runs on an Administrative Action and an action plan. Nearly all of them can then go to the Grievance or Appeal Committee, the same panel wearing different names.

Answering in the wrong track spends the one response you get. Match your letter first: conduct code charges, academic misconduct, academic dismissal and suspension, or SAP appeals. If it is ambiguous, ask in writing which policy you are charged under.

What should you do first?

Pull the catalog in force on your incident date, not a summary, and read the grievance and appeal sections before the conduct sections. Then get the attendance record itself, because in an attendance case the record is the case: hours recorded, tardies converted, and the percentage the University says you missed. Ask in writing for the calculation, not the conclusion.

Request the “Request for a Grievance Committee” form from the Director of Student Services early, because it names the people attending with you and it starts the process. Preserve drafts, version history, learning management timestamps, discussion-board posts and every email from your instructor and dean before anything auto-deletes. Do not sit for a meeting before you know what is alleged, and if the allegation rests on a similarity report or an AI-detection score, read the page on AI accusations first.

What does Everglades University’s own policy actually say?

The public rights page is short; the catalog carries the operative rules. Read them together, and read the enrollment agreement alongside both for the arbitration clause.

• Conduct office: the University publishes a summary of student rights and responsibilities, including the right to “[f]air, equal non-discriminatory treatment from all University personnel.” The operative procedures sit with the Director of Student Services, who convenes the Grievance and Appeal Committees.
• Governing policy: the Standards of Conduct in the catalog, listing cheating and plagiarism, improper or illegal conduct, disruptive behavior and misuse of information technology as grounds for dismissal, with the Honor Code and Professional Behavior Policy. No Florida College System rule and no Board of Governors regulation governs a private university.
• Academic integrity: an F on the assignment for a first occurrence, an F in the course for a second, dismissal for a third, cumulative across the whole program rather than per course or term. Dismissed students may reapply after one full semester out.
• Appeal window: no campus-specific day-count located for filing. The catalog sets the steps but not a deadline to request the hearing, so ask in writing what your filing deadline is and keep the reply. What follows is fixed: the Director of Student Services schedules the hearing “within 10 business days of receipt of the request,” you get ten minutes to present and three to rebut, and the decision comes “within seventy-two (72) hours (3 Business Days)” after approval by the President. A written complaint is separately acknowledged within 10 business days and answered within 15.
• Standard of proof: the catalog publishes none. The panel’s stated job is “to ascertain if Everglades University’s policy has been adhered to,” a procedural question rather than an evidentiary standard.
• Advisor: published and specific. “The student may bring legal counsel to the hearing but legal counsel cannot speak on behalf of the student. The student must represent them self and present his/her case to the panel.” Anyone attending with you must be named on the request form in advance. At a public Florida college § 1006.60(3)(g) would let that lawyer participate fully and question witnesses.
• Academic standing: the satisfactory academic progress policy in the catalog, requiring a 1.7 grade point average after the first semester and 2.0 thereafter, 67 percent completion of credit hours attempted, and completion within 150 percent of normal program length, with financial aid warning, probation and dismissal as the steps.
• Title IX and equal opportunity: the Title IX Coordinator is the Vice President of Academic Affairs at the Boca Raton campus.
• Disability accommodations: the same office holds the Section 504 Coordinator role.

One clause deserves its own paragraph. The enrollment agreement contains an arbitration clause: any dispute “shall be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules,” arbitrator fees are “split evenly between the parties,” and “if Everglades University prevails in the arbitration proceeding, Everglades University will be entitled to any reasonable attorney’s fees incurred in the defense of the student claim.” That clause, not the courthouse, is where a Sharick-style damages claim would probably be decided.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at Everglades University — Title IX, Title VI, or Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where I am admitted to the bar. Palm Beach County sits in that district, so no pro hac vice motion and no sponsoring local attorney is needed. There is no Fourteenth Amendment claim against a private university, and the contract claim under Stetson and Sharick is a state-law claim subject to the arbitration clause above. What decides these cases 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

Here the policy answers the advisor question in advance, and answers it halfway: a lawyer may sit with you and may not speak. That makes preparation the whole job. Ten minutes to present and three to rebut is not much room, so what matters is the documentary packet you hand the panel and the correspondence beforehand that fixes the University to a version of its own procedure. Everglades also runs a 504 and ADA route through the same office, worth using early if an accommodation is part of the story.

Other Florida universities

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 Florida universities:

• Florida Atlantic University
• Florida International University
• Florida Memorial University
• Florida National University
• Florida State University
• Full Sail University

Common questions about Everglades University student cases

Can I bring a lawyer to an Everglades University hearing?

Yes, but the lawyer cannot speak. The catalog says the student may bring legal counsel to the hearing, that counsel cannot speak on behalf of the student, and that the student must represent themself and present the case to the panel. Anyone attending with you has to be named on the request form beforehand. At a Florida public college the opposite rule applies by statute: Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3)(g) lets a legal representative participate in all aspects of the proceeding and question witnesses. That statute does not reach a private university.

How does Everglades count academic integrity violations?

Cumulatively, across your whole program. A first occurrence of academic dishonesty means an F on the assignment, a second means an F in the course, and a third means dismissal from the University. The catalog states that these progressive measures are cumulative throughout the program and are not limited to occurrences within a specific course or term. That is why a minor first finding matters more than it looks: it is the step that makes a later allegation a dismissal case. Dismissed students may reapply after one full semester out.

Can I be dismissed from Everglades for missing class?

Yes. The catalog says absences over 25 percent of class hours in a subject may make you ineligible to take the final examination in it, and that tardiness accrues toward that same 25 percent because students are docked for time missed. Excessive absences may also lead to academic warning, probation, suspension, termination and cancellation of financial aid, and habitual tardiness may result in a reduced final grade or dismissal if unsatisfactory progress is evident. Ask for the attendance calculation in writing.

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 Florida schools page.

This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.