Southern Technical College Student Defense Lawyer

Students call about Southern Technical College at three points: when an instructor reports plagiarism or unauthorized AI use, when the Executive Director or Director of Education writes about a code of conduct violation, and after a satisfactory academic progress dismissal has already been decided. All three run on short clocks, and all three turn on a record built in the first days.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Southern Technical College?

Southern Technical College is a private, for-profit institution, and that fact sets the frame. A private school is not a state actor: the Fourteenth Amendment does not reach it, there is no constitutional due process claim, and no petition for certiorari. Florida settled the theory in John B. Stetson University v. Hunt, 88 Fla. 510, 102 So. 637 (1924): the relation between a student and an institution 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.” The contract is the catalog and the enrollment agreement.

Florida does have a real campus due process statute, and it is worth knowing what you are not getting. Fla. Stat. § 1006.60(3) gives students at every Florida College System institution and state university 7 business days’ written notice, disclosure of all known information including exculpatory material, preponderance with the burden on the institution, an impartial hearing officer, an appeal of right, and at § 1006.60(3)(g) a “legal representative” who “may directly participate in all aspects of the proceeding, including … questioning of witnesses.” It does not reach this college.

The contract claim, though, is real. 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 over one failing grade proved to a jury that the dismissal was “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 matter: 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 Jallali v. Nova Southeastern University, Inc., 992 So. 2d 338 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), reviews academic judgment only for arbitrariness, irrationality, bad faith or violation of law. A breach of contract claim is built on numbered steps the school wrote down and skipped. And exhaust first: Gamma Phi Chapter of Sigma Chi Fraternity v. University of Miami, 703 So. 2d 497 (Fla. 3d DCA 1997), reversed sanctions resting on “an ex parte fact-finding process which was neither adequate nor fair,” while Gamma Phi Chapter v. University of Miami, 718 So. 2d 910 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998), would not act before internal remedies were exhausted.

One catalog provision changes where that claim goes. The catalog carries a pre-dispute arbitration and class action waiver under which student and college “agree that any dispute or claim … shall be submitted to and resolved by mandatory, individual binding arbitration conducted by the American Arbitration Association … or in the alternative in Small Claims Court.” It defines “claim” to cover contract, tort, recruitment, quality of instruction and civil rights claims, and bars class actions. Read your enrollment agreement before assuming a Sharick claim reaches a jury.

Where do Southern Technical College cases come from?

Southern Technical College is an ACCSC-accredited career college with an Orlando main campus, two Orlando satellites, and branch campuses in Auburndale, Brandon, Port Charlotte, Sanford and Tampa. Its programs are trade and allied-health: electrical technology, HVAC and refrigeration, welding, veterinary assisting, medical assisting, medical laboratory technician, surgical technician and diagnostic medical sonography. The Surgical Technician degree at Tampa and Port Charlotte carries ABHES accreditation; Diagnostic Medical Sonography at Tampa carries CAAHEP accreditation.

That mix explains the caseload. The cases that end a credential here are externship and clinical failures, professionalism concerns at a site, attendance, and academic progress dismissals. Because the code reaches “externships and clinical sites,” a site’s complaint becomes a college charge.

Two features of a small campus matter more here than anywhere. First, the same two people appear at every stage. The Executive Director and the Director of Education decide whether the conduct policy reaches your off-campus behaviour, they are steps two and three of the grievance procedure, and they are the pair who “conduct the review of the appeal.” At a public Florida college § 1006.60(3)(h) would require that whoever hears the appeal “may not have directly participated in any other proceeding related to the charged violation.” The statute does not bind this college, but where its catalog assigns separate roles and one person fills two, that is the specific, material departure Tercier leaves enforceable. Record the name, the role and the date every time.

Second, the credit does not travel, and the catalog says so: “The College’s programs are not designed to transfer to other institutions. No representation is made concerning the transferability of credits earned at STC to any other institution.” A dismissal here ends a credential rather than postponing it, which is why the sanction is more negotiable, and more important, than the finding.

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

The label on the letter picks the decision-maker and the clock. A plagiarism or AI allegation runs on a fixed ladder under the academic dishonesty policy and is academic misconduct. A behaviour allegation is a conduct code charge. Failing satisfactory academic progress is academic dismissal, handled through the SAP appeal on its own deadline. Anything else goes to the grievance procedure.

Answering in the wrong track spends the only response you get, and the deadlines run differently: the SAP appeal is keyed to the start of a term, not the date of the letter. If the letter does not name the policy, ask in writing.

What should you do first?

Get the edition of the catalog in force on your incident date, and your enrollment agreement, which carries the arbitration terms the catalog describes. Read the academic dishonesty ladder first, because the consequence is fixed by offense number: a zero on the assignment, a zero for the course, dismissal.

Then calendar the appeal. A SAP dismissal appeal goes in writing to the Director of Education “prior to the first scheduled class day of the term in which the student wants to return,” with documentation of extenuating circumstances, and the decision “is final and may not be further appealed.” Ask in writing for the charge, the evidence and the decision-maker. Preserve externship evaluations, attendance records, drafts, version history and learning-management timestamps. If the allegation is unauthorized use of ChatGPT, read the page on AI accusations first, because the college’s AI policy turns on what the syllabus permitted.

What does Southern Technical College’s own policy actually say?

One document carries everything: the college catalog, which applies to every listed campus at once. A policy that never names your campus is still the right policy.

  • Conduct office: none named. The 2026 STC Catalog assigns discretion to “the Executive Director and/or the Director of Education or his or her designee.”
  • Governing policy: the Student Code of Conduct in the catalog, reaching conduct on campus, at college events and at externships and clinical sites. No Florida College System rule or Board of Governors regulation reaches a private college.
  • Academic integrity: a separate catalog policy with a fixed ladder. “First time violators of the plagiarism policy will be issued a zero on the assignment, second time violators will be issued a zero for the course, and third time violators will be dismissed from the institution.” The copyright policy runs the same ladder, and the AI policy makes use in violation of a syllabus or clinical requirement “academic misconduct.”
  • Appeal window: for conduct, none published. The Student Code of Conduct states the offenses and the sanctions and stops there — no notice period, no hearing, no committee, no appeal. No campus-specific day-count located; the only route is the grievance procedure, where the Executive Director responds “generally … within no more than ten (10) days” and the designated officer within about ten more. For a SAP dismissal the deadline is the first scheduled class day of the term you want to return.
  • Standard of proof: the catalog publishes none. No burden and no evidentiary standard appears in the conduct policy.
  • Advisor: not addressed. The conduct policy says nothing about an advisor or an attorney, because it sets out no proceeding at which one could appear. The one mention of counsel is in the arbitration section: “A student may, but need not, be represented by an attorney at the arbitration.” At a public Florida college § 1006.60(3)(g) would give you a lawyer who may question witnesses.
  • Academic standing: no separate academic policy URL was located; the standards sit inside the same catalog. They set a 150 percent maximum time frame with termination at that checkpoint, a warning period needing no appeal, and dismissal in writing after warning, with a written appeal to the Director of Education reviewed by him and the Executive Director.
  • Title IX: the catalog states its grievance procedures are used for complaints of sex discrimination under Title IX and for other discrimination complaints, but names no coordinator. Ask for the name in writing.

The gap in that list is the point. A college may lawfully write a conduct code with no procedure in it, and this one largely has. That cuts both ways: there is little published process to enforce under Tercier, and nothing saying the college may skip notice, evidence or a chance to respond. Ask for all three in writing, before the decision.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at Southern Technical College — Title IX, Title VI, or Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in a United States District Court, and because the college operates campuses across more than one federal district, which court depends on where your campus sits. I am admitted to the bars of the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida, so the federal forum is covered wherever that is: no pro hac vice motion and no sponsoring local attorney is needed. There is no Fourteenth Amendment claim against a private college, and the contract claim under Stetson and Sharick is a state-law claim the enrollment agreement may send to arbitration. The campus record decides almost all of these:

  • 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 the policy, and here the policy is silent, so the answer is whatever you negotiate beforehand. Ask in writing whether you may bring someone and whether that person may speak. The written response, the documentary record and the correspondence pinning the college to its own procedure are prepared in advance, and on an appeal the catalog calls final there is no second draft.

Other Florida technical and career institutions

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 technical and career institutions:

Common questions about Southern Technical College student cases

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

No. Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) requires 7 business days of written notice, disclosure of the evidence including exculpatory material 5 business days out, preponderance with the burden on the institution, an impartial hearing officer, an appeal of right, and a legal representative who may question witnesses. It reaches only Florida College System institutions and state universities. Southern Technical College is private and for-profit, so neither that statute nor the Fourteenth Amendment applies. Your protections come from the catalog and your enrollment agreement.

Does Southern Technical College give me a hearing before dismissal?

The catalog does not promise one. The Student Code of Conduct lists the offenses and states that a violation may bring discipline up to suspension or dismissal, but sets out no notice period, no hearing, no committee, no standard of proof and no appeal. The only route afterwards is the five-step grievance procedure, ending with the Commission for Independent Education and the accrediting commission. Ask in writing for the charge, the evidence and a chance to respond before any decision issues.

How long do I have to appeal a Southern Technical College academic dismissal?

Until the first scheduled class day of the term you want to return to. A student dismissed for failing satisfactory academic progress must submit a written appeal, with documentation of extenuating circumstances, to the Director of Education before that day. The Director of Education and the Executive Director review it and may forward it to main office staff for approval or denial, and the catalog states any decision on an appeal is final. Gather your documentation immediately.

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.