Principia College: Student Discipline, Dismissal & Federal Court

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Principia?

Principia is a small private college of roughly 330 students at Elsah, on the bluffs above the Mississippi in Jersey County, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission continuously since 1923 and serving the Christian Science community. Its conduct process differs from every other institution in the Southern District of Illinois in one structural respect, and it is the thing a student most needs to understand before a hearing: Principia does not give you an advisor of your own choosing. It assigns you one.

Principia College is a private institution. There is no state action, so there is no constitutional due process claim, and arguing one wastes an appeal. The theory is contract: Illinois holds that a college and its students have a contractual relationship whose terms come from the catalog and the handbook — Raethz v. Aurora University, 346 Ill. App. 3d 728 (2004), restated by the Fourth District in Urso v. Bradley University, 2023 IL App (4th) 230165 — while adding that the relationship “is unique and cannot be strictly categorized or characterized in purely contractual terms.”

The limit is the standard of review, and it decides most of these cases before anyone reaches the facts. A student has a remedy for an adverse academic decision only if it was made arbitrarily, capriciously, or in bad faith. Frederick v. Northwestern University Dental School, 247 Ill. App. 3d 464 (1993), puts it bluntly — courts have been loath to review, much less overturn, academic dismissals — and Bosch v. NorthShore University Health System, 2019 IL App (1st) 190070, holds that a school which departs somewhat from its handbook still wins unless the departure was material. Federal law does not care that the school is private: Title IX, Title VI and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act apply because it takes federal funds, and the ADA applies to it as a place of public accommodation.

A federal claim arising at Principia College is filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois — Jersey County sits in that district under 28 U.S.C. § 93(c), and the court holds sessions at East St. Louis, Benton, Alton and Cairo. I was admitted to the bar of that court on 28 August 2026 on my Florida license, under its Local Rule 83.1(a), which opens general admission to any attorney licensed in any state. That means a Title IX, Section 504, ADA or due process suit for a Principia student is one I file and try under my own name, with no pro hac vice motion and no sponsoring attorney. It also means something most districts do not offer: Local Rule 83.1 states that parties represented by counsel who do not reside in the district are not required to retain local counsel, though the court keeps the power to order it for good cause in a particular case.

The support person you do not choose

Where other colleges debate whether an advisor may speak, Principia’s Code of Conduct does not create the role at all. What it creates instead is a Support Person, and the Code assigns who that is: “The responding party’s RC will act as a Support Person upon entering the student conduct process. The role of the Support Person is to provide social-emotional and spiritual support to the student throughout the conduct process. The RC may also provide relevant context to the Community Board concerning the impact of potential sanctions.”

A full-text reading of the Code of Conduct returns no occurrence of the words attorney, lawyer, legal counsel or advocate. There is no published right to an advisor of your own choosing, and no published procedure for requesting one. That is not the same as a prohibition — it is an absence — but a student should not plan on the basis of a right the document does not contain. If you want someone else in the room, the request has to be made in writing, in advance, and the answer kept.

The structure around it: a Student Conduct Administrator, a Conduct Assistant who resolves Level 1 violations against “a Level 1 outcome rubric,” a Community Board panel for Level 2 and Level 3 violations whose recommended sanctions require the Dean of Students’ approval, and then the Dean and the President on appeal.

Seven days — but seven of what?

Principia applies preponderance of the evidence, and says so clearly: a finding requires “evidence that sufficiently demonstrates that it is more likely than not that a violation occurred. Without evidence that meets this standard, a student or group will not be found responsible.”

The appeal provision reads: “The responding and reporting parties both have the right to submit a written appeal of the findings, including determination of responsibility and sanctions, to the Dean of Students within 7 days of being notified of the decision and sanctions. The burden of proof lies with the party requesting the appeal.” The Dean then decides whether there are sufficient grounds for review by the President, who “can either adjudicate the case or refer it back to the Community Board with an alternate set of panelists within 5 business days of receipt of the appeal.” Appeal decisions are final.

Note what that paragraph does and does not say. It designates the President’s window as “5 business days” and leaves the student’s window as a bare “7 days.” Where a drafter specifies the unit in one sentence and omits it in the next, the omission is usually deliberate, and the safe reading is the one that costs you nothing: treat your seven days as calendar days and file early. Nobody has ever lost an appeal by filing it too soon.

The grounds are closed and should be argued as such: new information not available at the time of the investigation or hearing; alleged bias of the Student Conduct Administrator, Community Board members or other parties; or “significant and material procedural error that affected the outcome of the process.” Note the last one has two elements — the error must be significant and material, and it must have affected the outcome. An appeal that proves an error without connecting it to the result is arguing half the ground.

One timing quirk works in a student’s favor: after notification of suspension, “the suspension will go into effect up to 21 days later.” That is real breathing room to act. Principia does not publish a minimum notice period before a hearing, nor a deadline for the college to issue its decision.

Academic standing, and two published deadlines that do not agree

Principia sets Probation Requirement GPA bands by credit: a student with 0–30 semester hours needs 1.600–1.799, and one with more than 30 hours needs 1.800–1.999. Below those minimums the student is suspended, and “a student may be suspended directly from good standing for extremely poor performance (for example, a term GPA below 1.0).”

On the appeal deadline, Principia publishes two different answers in two official places, and a student should know both rather than trusting whichever they happen to find first:

• The catalog states: “Appeals must be submitted no later than two weeks before the beginning of the following semester.” That is a fixed date anchored to the academic calendar.
• The registrar’s Academic Suspension Appeals Procedure states: “Your appeal must be submitted by the deadline indicated in your suspension letter.” That is an individual date anchored to your own notice.

They can easily produce different dates. Where a school publishes two deadlines, the only safe course is to work to whichever falls first, and to ask the registrar in writing to confirm which controls. Appeals are decided by the Dean of Academics in consultation with the Scholastic Committee chair and the Registrar, must set out extreme circumstances with supporting evidence and written input from academic advisors and professors, and — the registrar’s page says so directly — “are rarely granted.”

Academic integrity is handled separately: minor cases of poor scholarship are resolved between instructor and student, while “moderate and egregious cases of academic misconduct are reported to the registrar and involve the Scholastic Committee.” Principia publishes neither an appeal deadline nor a standard of proof for that track. Students on study abroad are additionally subject to separate published guidelines for student infractions.

What a student defense lawyer can do here

Most of the value is early and quiet. It is reading Principia’s policy against what the school actually did and finding the gap; writing the response or the appeal so it argues the grounds the policy recognizes rather than the ones that feel most unfair; preserving the federal issues — Title IX, Section 504 and the ADA, FERPA — so they are in the record if the case ever leaves campus; and identifying comparators, because a sanction far outside what similar cases drew is one of the few arguments that reliably moves a decision-maker.

At Principia the work is shaped by what the documents leave out. Because there is no published advisor of choice, most of what a lawyer contributes happens off-campus and on paper: drafting the written appeal so it lands squarely inside the three permitted grounds, connecting any procedural error to the outcome rather than just proving it happened, and using the twenty-one-day gap before a suspension takes effect rather than letting it pass. Because two academic-appeal deadlines are published, getting the registrar to confirm the controlling one in writing is itself a protective step.

What a lawyer cannot do is turn a campus hearing into a trial. The rules of evidence do not apply, there is no discovery, and the school decides its own case at first instance. That is exactly why the written record built during the campus process is the whole ballgame: by the time a court looks at it, the record is closed.

The one Illinois statute that gives you procedure

Illinois has no general statute setting notice periods, hearing formats, standards of proof or appeal rights for college students. The Illinois School Code, 105 ILCS 5, has a detailed suspension and expulsion scheme, and it applies to elementary and secondary schools, not here. The exception is the Preventing Sexual Violence in Higher Education Act, 110 ILCS 155, and it is a real one. It reaches every higher education institution in the state — public universities, community colleges, and private not-for-profit and for-profit institutions alike — and it requires timely written notice of the allegations to all parties, an investigation that is adequate, reliable and impartial, written notice of the outcome, and appeal rights. It requires the school to make confidential advisors available, trained to a statutory standard and kept separate from the people deciding the case. Both parties are entitled to an advisor of their choice, and that advisor may be an attorney — although the institution may limit how far an attorney-advisor participates in a hearing, which is why Principia’s own rule on that, set out above, still governs what your lawyer may do in the room. The standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence, applied the same way to both sides.

What to do first

1. Find the deadline and write it down. Every deadline on this page came from Principia’s own published document, and the unit matters as much as the number — business days, school days and calendar days produce very different dates from the same starting point. If the notice you were sent gives a different date from the policy, work to whichever is shorter.
2. Download the version of the policy that governed your cohort, not the one on the website today. Schools revise handbooks between catalog years, and the operative document is the one in force when the conduct happened. Save a PDF with the date visible.
3. Ask, in writing, for the evidence. Request the investigation file, the report, the exhibits and the names of anyone who decided. Put the request in email so the date exists.
4. Write nothing to the school about the merits until you know the process. A statement made to be helpful in a meeting becomes the record a court reviews later.
5. Say if you have a disability or requested an accommodation. If accommodations were requested and not provided, or a condition explains the performance, that is a Section 504 and ADA question that belongs in the record now, not on appeal.

One honest caveat about geography. Illinois has three federal districts. I am admitted to two of them: the Northern District, which takes Chicago and the northern counties, and the Southern District. A federal claim arising at a school in Springfield, Peoria, Champaign-Urbana or the Quad Cities falls in the Central District; I am not a member of that bar, and those matters I handle with local counsel in that district or by pro hac vice admission. I say so before a retainer rather than after.

Where I am licensed. I am licensed to practice law in Florida. I am admitted to the bars of the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida, the District of Colorado, the Northern and Southern Districts of Illinois, the District of Nebraska, the District of New Mexico, and the Western District of Wisconsin, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Federal court admission is not a license to practice the law of the state in which the court sits. I am not licensed in Illinois and do not advise on Illinois state law or appear in Illinois state court.

Other Illinois 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 Illinois colleges:

• Rend Lake College
• SIU Carbondale
• SIU Edwardsville
• Southeastern Illinois College
• Southwestern Illinois College
• Wabash Valley College

Common questions about Principia student cases

Can I bring my own advisor or a lawyer to a Principia hearing?

The Code of Conduct does not provide for one. It assigns a “Support Person” — your resident counselor — whose stated role is social-emotional and spiritual support, and who may give the Community Board context on the impact of potential sanctions. The words attorney, lawyer, legal counsel and advocate do not appear in the Code at all. That is an absence rather than an express prohibition, so a written request in advance is reasonable; just do not assume the right exists.

Is my seven-day appeal window calendar days or business days?

Principia does not say, and the omission looks deliberate: the very same paragraph specifies “5 business days” for the President’s window while leaving the student’s at a bare “7 days.” Treat yours as calendar days and file early. If you want certainty, ask the Dean of Students’ office in writing to confirm the count, and keep the answer.

What can I actually argue on appeal?

Three grounds, and only three: relevant, substantive and new information that was not available at the time of the investigation or hearing; alleged bias of the Student Conduct Administrator, Community Board members or others involved; or a significant and material procedural error that affected the outcome. That last ground has two halves — the error and its effect on the result — and an appeal that establishes only the first is incomplete.

My academic suspension letter gives a different deadline from the catalog. Which one applies?

Both are published, which is the problem. The catalog says appeals are due no later than two weeks before the start of the following semester; the registrar’s page says they are due by the deadline in your suspension letter. Work to whichever date comes first, and ask the registrar in writing which one controls. The registrar’s page also notes that these appeals “are rarely granted,” so the substance needs to be strong as well as timely.

How long before a suspension actually starts?

The Code provides that after a student receives notification of suspension, “the suspension will go into effect up to 21 days later.” That window is usable time — for the appeal, for arrangements about housing and coursework, and for getting advice. It is worth confirming your specific effective date in writing as soon as the notification arrives.