Ringling College of Art and Design Student Defense Lawyer

Students at Ringling College of Art and Design call at three points: when a faculty member sends written notice of an Academic Integrity Policy violation, when a semester ends and an academic dismissal letter arrives, and when a withdrawal or an attendance problem has quietly pushed a GPA below the line. All three run on ten-day clocks, and all three are decided on a written record.

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

Ringling College is a private nonprofit college, and that single fact sets the frame. A private college is not a state actor, so the Fourteenth Amendment does not reach it and there is no constitutional due process claim. Florida settled that a century ago. 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 Student Handbook.

The second point is the one Florida students most often get backwards. Florida does have a statutory due process code for campus discipline. Fla. Stat. § 1006.60(3) requires 7 business days’ written notice, disclosure of the evidence 5 business days out including exculpatory material, 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 Ringling. Everything you are owed here comes out of the handbook.

What the handbook gives you is still worth enforcing. In Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, 780 So. 2d 136 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000), a student dismissed about two months before graduation won a jury finding that the dismissal was “arbitrary, capricious, and/or lacking any discernable rational basis,” and the Third District held damages were not capped at tuition: lost future earning capacity is recoverable. A jury later 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). Tercier v. University of Miami, No. 3D22-1334 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug. 2, 2023), sets the limit: “only specific promises … in a school’s bulletins, circulars[,] and handbooks … are enforceable,” and general policy statements will not do. A breach of contract claim is built from the numbered steps the college published and then skipped. Finish the internal process first: Gamma Phi Chapter v. University of Miami, 718 So. 2d 910 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998), declined to intervene before “exhaustion of an available administrative remedy.”

Where do Ringling College cases come from?

Ringling enrolls roughly 1,670 students in Sarasota in B.F.A. and B.A. programs: Business of Art and Design, Computer Animation, Creative Technologies, Creative Writing, Entertainment Design, Film, Fine Arts, Game Art, Graphic Design, Illustration, Motion Design, Virtual Reality Development and Visual Studies. That matters, because the case that ends a Ringling career is usually not a conduct charge. It is an academic-standing letter.

The thresholds are strict and cumulative. Every undergraduate must hold a semester and a cumulative GPA of 2.0. Probation follows if either falls below 2.0, or if you fail three credit hours. Dismissal follows in three situations: probation in two consecutive semesters plus a cumulative GPA below 2.0 for a third or three failed credit hours; failing grades in six or more credit hours in one semester; or a first-semester first-year student below a 1.00 cumulative GPA. Attendance feeds straight into that: a student who misses more than 13.3% of a course fails it, and documentation for an excused absence must reach Academic Advising within two weeks. A dismissal or suspension here is often the arithmetic of three small problems.

The stakes are structural. Studio majors are sequenced, and the handbook says so: if required courses are taken out of sequence, the student “will forfeit priority status for the course and will be enrolled on a space-available basis, possibly delaying graduation.” The handbook also warns that changing majors “might result in an additional year of study.” One term out of a sequence is usually a year, and an academically dismissed student “will not be considered for readmission for one academic year” on top of that. Which is why the sanction, the transcript notation and the readmission terms are often 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 the decision-maker, the clock and the protections, and at Ringling the two academic tracks are not the same. An Academic Integrity Policy allegation starts with a faculty member and a conference, and contested cases go to a Sub Committee of the Academic Standards Committee. An academic dismissal for grades is not a misconduct case at all: it goes straight to the Academic Standards Committee on a written appeal, with no hearing and no charge to answer. A grade of WF after a late withdrawal is appealed to the same committee. Non-academic conduct sits elsewhere in the handbook, on its own track.

Answering in the wrong track spends the one response you get. Match the letter to the right process first: academic misconduct, conduct code charges, or a SAP appeal where financial aid is what is actually at risk. If the letter does not name the policy, ask in writing and keep the answer.

What should you do first?

Pull the handbook section in force on your incident date rather than a summary, and read the appeal paragraph before the rule. In an integrity case, get the syllabus, the assignment instructions, the citation guidance you were given, and the file history of the work itself — layered project files, version history, render logs, repository commits and learning-management timestamps are ordinary evidence in a studio program, and they are dated. Ask the faculty member in writing what exactly is alleged before the conference, because the conference is where the informal resolution is decided.

In an academic dismissal, count the days from receipt of the notification, not from the date on the letter, and get your unofficial transcript so you can check the college’s arithmetic against the published thresholds. If a disability, a medical episode or an accommodation that was never put in place is part of why the grades fell, that belongs in the appeal and it belongs there with documentation; read the page on 504 and ADA accommodations. If the accusation rests on a similarity report or an AI-detection score, read the page on AI accusations before you answer.

What does Ringling College’s own policy actually say?

Ringling publishes its academic policies and its Academic Integrity Policy in one place, so two entries below point to the same handbook section. That is deliberate.

  • Conduct office: the Vice President for Academic Affairs, who “is responsible for overall administration of” the Academic Integrity Policy in the Ringling College Student Handbook, with contested cases heard by a Sub Committee of the Academic Standards Committee.
  • Governing policy: the Academic Integrity Policy and the academic standing rules in that handbook section. No Florida College System rule or Board of Governors regulation governs a private college, so nothing sits above it.
  • Academic integrity: faculty must give written notice “normally within ten (10) calendar days” of becoming aware, and a conference with the Department Head or Program Director follows “normally within seven (7) calendar days.” A notice of intent to appeal is due “in writing within ten (10) calendar days following the conference”; the Sub Committee schedules a formal review within ten calendar days and rules within ten more. Penalties run from a teachable moment through failure of the course, academic probation, academic suspension and expulsion, and there is no statute of limitations — degree revocation after graduation is on the list.
  • Appeal window: ten days. “Academically dismissed students have 10 days from receipt of notification to appeal their academic dismissal. They must appeal in writing to the Academic Standards Committee,” addressed to the Office of Advising, Records and Registration Services. “The decision of the Academic Standards Committee is final.” In an integrity case the Sub Committee’s decisions “shall not be subject to further review,” though the Vice President for Academic Affairs may reduce a sanction.
  • Standard of proof: preponderance. “A violation of the following policy will be determined based upon the preponderance of the evidence standard, meaning that a student will be held responsible if it is more likely than not that a violation has occurred.” That is the same standard § 1006.60(3)(b) fixes at a Florida public college, but here it is a handbook term rather than a statutory right.
  • Advisor: read this closely. “An Advisor is a current College employee or student, chosen by an accused student,” and “Advisors are not permitted to speak or participate directly in any meetings / hearings without approval of the chair of the Committee.” An outside attorney does not fit that definition. The Sub Committee must also receive advance notice of the advisor’s identity. The handbook does add that “[t]he use of an Advisor is strongly recommended.”
  • Academic standing: published in the same academic information section, with the 2.0 threshold, the probation triggers and the three dismissal categories set out above. A dismissal is noted on the transcript as “Academic Dismissal.”

Two gaps are worth naming. Ringling’s non-academic conduct process, its Title IX office and its disability services office are not published in this handbook section, so no campus-specific day-count located for a non-academic conduct appeal — request the current policy in writing from the dean of students’ office and keep the reply, because a policy you cannot reach is not adequate published notice. Second, the college “will not release transcripts to students who owe the College money or have defaulted on educational loans.” Florida does not forbid that; § 1006.60(1) expressly authorises it at public institutions, and nothing in Florida law bars a private college from doing it by contract. See transcript holds.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at Ringling College — Title IX, Title VI, or Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, where I am admitted to the bar. There is no Fourteenth Amendment claim against a private college, and the contract claim under Stetson and Sharick is a state-law claim. Almost none of these matters reach a courtroom. 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

Here the handbook settles the advisor question against an outside lawyer: the Advisor must be a current College employee or student, and may not speak without the chair’s approval. That does not make counsel useless. It moves the work to where a Ringling case is won: the ten-day appeal letter, the documentary reconstruction of how a project was made, and the correspondence that fixes the college to its published timetable.

Other Florida 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 Florida colleges:

Common questions about Ringling College student cases

How long do I have to appeal an academic dismissal from Ringling College?

Ten days from receipt of the notification, in writing, to the Academic Standards Committee, addressed to the Office of Advising, Records and Registration Services. The handbook says the committee’s decision is final. A dismissal is noted on your transcript as Academic Dismissal, and a dismissed student generally will not be considered for readmission for one academic year, so the appeal is realistically your one chance to keep the sequence you are already in.

Can a lawyer come with me to a Ringling academic integrity review?

No. The handbook defines an Advisor as a current College employee or student chosen by the accused student, which does not include an outside attorney, and it says advisors are not permitted to speak or participate directly in any meeting or hearing without the approval of the committee chair. The Sub Committee must be told the advisor’s identity in advance. At a Florida public college the opposite rule applies by statute under section 1006.60(3)(g).

Does the Florida student due process statute protect me at Ringling College?

No. Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) requires 7 business days of notice, disclosure of the evidence 5 business days out, preponderance of the evidence with the burden on the institution, an appeal of right, and a legal representative who may question witnesses. It reaches only Florida College System institutions and state universities. Ringling is a private college, so neither that statute nor the Fourteenth Amendment applies. Your protections come from the Student Handbook, which is why its exact wording matters.

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.