Shepherd University Student Defense Lawyer

Shepherd University students usually contact me after a conduct charge, an academic-integrity referral, or a letter saying that academic standing is under review — often within a day or two of a conversation with an administrator that they now realize was part of the process rather than a preliminary to it. Shepherd is a public university in Shepherdstown, in the eastern panhandle, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and enrolling a few thousand students. It publishes a student handbook, a civility policy, and academic regulations, and those documents are the starting point for nearly every case I see there, because on a campus this size the written rule and the actual practice can drift apart quickly.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Shepherd?

Shepherd is a public institution, so the Fourteenth Amendment applies to it. Under Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), a disciplinary suspension requires notice of the charge and an opportunity to respond, and the more serious the separation, the more process is due. That is a constitutional floor. The university’s own published procedures generally promise more, and the school is held to them — which is why the first document to obtain is not the charge letter but the policy the charge letter is operating under.

Academic evaluation is treated differently. Under Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), and Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), courts defer substantially to genuine academic judgment and will not second-guess a careful faculty assessment. So the framing of your matter is consequential from the outset, and a punitive decision wearing an academic label is worth challenging on that basis alone.

Where do Shepherd cases come from?

The recurring sources are writing-intensive and online coursework, where similarity and AI-detection software generate integrity referrals that would once have required an instructor to notice something; group assignments where the syllabus never specified what collaboration was allowed; residence-hall and social conduct matters on a residential campus where students live in close quarters; and academic-standing decisions, which often carry scholarship or financial-aid consequences the letter does not spell out.

Shepherd also runs professional and clinical programs, including nursing, along with teacher preparation that places students in schools. Field and clinical placements introduce a second decision-maker the university does not control: a site can end a placement quickly, and the program then has to decide whether that is a reassignment, a delay, or a failure. Those decisions are made under progression rules rather than conduct rules, and they are handled the way I describe on my clinical, rotation, and externship failures and nursing school dismissal pages.

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

Conduct charges, integrity allegations, Title IX complaints, and academic-standing determinations run on separate tracks with different decision-makers, deadlines, and rules about who may attend. The track controls what is possible. Establish it in writing before you respond: academic misconduct and honor code, student conduct, Title IX and sexual misconduct, or academic dismissal and suspension.

What should you do first?

Pull the current student handbook and academic regulations from the university’s own site rather than relying on any summary, including this one, and save the version in effect when your matter arose. If you are in a clinical or field-placement program, get that program’s handbook too, because it usually governs progression and often sets a shorter appeal window.

Then calendar the deadline in writing. Request your file. Preserve drafting history, cloud-document version records, messages, and any written accommodation before anything is deleted. And do not sit for an interview or submit a written statement until you understand what the university claims to have. In smaller conduct systems, an initial conversation offered as informal is regularly treated afterward as substantive evidence.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
• Testing whether Shepherd followed its own published procedures
• Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
• Assisting with the written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
• Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
• Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language

What a lawyer may actually do in your case depends on that school’s policy. Some processes allow counsel to participate, some allow a non-participating advisor, and some allow no outside person at all. Reading the current policy is the first step, because it determines whether the work happens in the hearing room or entirely in writing.

Common questions about Shepherd student cases

I was told the meeting was just a conversation. Was it?

Sometimes, and sometimes not. Many campus procedures include an initial administrative meeting that is formally part of the process even when it is described casually, and what a student says there routinely appears in the file. Write down what you remember as soon as possible, note who was present, and if the school’s summary is inaccurate, correct it in writing early rather than at the appeal.

The AI detector flagged my paper but I wrote it myself. What now?

Preserve the evidence before doing anything else — version history, revision timestamps, notes, sources, and the drafts themselves. Detection tools report probabilities rather than findings, and their output can be tested: what tool, what version, what threshold, what the instructor did with the score, and whether the syllabus permitted the assistance at issue. Those questions are far more effective before a hearing than after a finding.

Does my accommodation approval matter here?

It can matter a great deal, particularly where the underlying problem is attendance, timing, or performance under exam conditions. Approved accommodations that were granted and then not delivered raise questions under Section 504 and the ADA alongside the academic question, which is the subject of my disability accommodations page. Bring the written approval and the dates.

Related West Virginia pages: Fairmont State University, West Virginia State University, West Virginia University, and Marshall University. The full list is on the West Virginia student defense index.

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 in Florida, admitted to the federal district courts in Florida, Colorado, northern and southern Illinois, Nebraska, New Mexico, and western Wisconsin, and not licensed in West Virginia; West Virginia matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, and association with local counsel or pro hac vice admission where required.