When your child calls to say they have been accused of cheating or a conduct violation in college, the instinct is to do what worked for eighteen years: call the school, get the facts, and fix it. Then comes the second shock. The school will not talk to you. Under federal privacy law, your child’s disciplinary case belongs to your child, the process moves fast, and the person with the least experience in the room is the one facing it alone. There are still real ways for a parent to help. They are just not the ones most parents try first.
Why Will the College Not Talk to Me About My Child’s Case?
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, transfers all education record rights from the parent to the student the moment the student enrolls in college, regardless of age. From that point, parents have no inherent right to access their child’s records, and that includes disciplinary files, investigation details, and hearing outcomes.
There are exceptions, but they are narrower than parents expect, and every one of them is permission, not obligation. A school may share records with parents who claim the student as a tax dependent, may notify parents of alcohol or drug violations when the student is under 21, and may reach out in a genuine health or safety emergency. May is the operative word in each case. Even when an exception applies, the school is allowed to share and still decline to, and many do. The one reliable path is your child signing the school’s FERPA release, which authorizes the school to speak with you, and even then the school talks to you as a courtesy, not as a party to the case.
The practical meaning is hard to hear but important: you cannot manage this case from the outside, no matter how many calls you make.
Why Is This More Serious Than It Sounds?
Parents often assume a college disciplinary matter is like a high school one, a meeting, a talking-to, a resolution. It is not. Colleges run formal processes with investigations, hearings, and findings, the deadlines are short, sometimes days, and the outcomes range from probation to suspension and expulsion. A finding can put scholarships and financial aid at risk, appear in responses to graduate school questions years later, and in some fields surface during professional licensing.
And unlike high school, no one in the process is required to look out for your child. The school runs cases like this every week. Your child will face it once, with everything on the line, usually while trying not to worry you.
What Mistakes Do Parents Make?
Calling the school repeatedly. Administrators cannot discuss the case with you, and pressure from a parent resolves nothing that the process itself will not decide. The energy is better spent where the case is actually won or lost.
Drafting the student’s response. A statement that reads like a parent or a lawyer wrote it, filed under the student’s name, hurts credibility, and the content of that early statement is quoted back at the hearing. What goes into it matters far more than how polished it sounds.
Telling the student to just apologize. Parents raised on take-responsibility advice often push a quick apology. Schools routinely treat apologies as admissions, including from students who did nothing wrong and apologized to seem cooperative.
Waiting to see how the first meeting goes. By the time the first meeting has gone badly, statements have been made and options have narrowed. The window where help matters most is before that meeting, not after.
What Can a Parent Actually Do?
Three things, and they are enough. First, have your child sign the FERPA release so the school can speak with you, which keeps you informed even though it does not give you a role in the process. Second, keep your child from responding to anything, the email, the meeting request, the informal chat invitation, until they understand the process and what is at stake, because the early statements are where cases are damaged. Third, get them experienced help, because the one thing FERPA cannot block is your child choosing who advises them.
Many schools allow the student to bring an advisor to meetings and hearings, though some, particularly private ones, restrict or exclude them, and what advisors may do varies by school, from silent presence to active participation. Where the rules permit, that advisor can be an attorney, and a parent arranging that is the most direct way to put experience on the student’s side of a process built entirely of the school’s experience. Even where the advisor’s role is limited or excluded from the room, the preparation happens outside it, and preparation is where these cases are decided.
How Does an Attorney Help When It Is Your Child’s Case?
Richard Asselta is a student defense attorney who defends college students in academic misconduct and disciplinary cases nationwide. He works with the student on the response and the hearing, and the appeal if a finding has already been issued, while keeping parents as involved as the student authorizes. For a parent, that solves the two problems at once: your child stops facing the process alone, and you stop depending on a school that is not permitted to tell you what is happening.
Because these cases are governed by each school’s own code of conduct, he represents students at colleges and universities across the country.
Frequently Asked Questions
My child is 18. Do they really have to handle this alone?
They have to be the one in the process, but they do not have to navigate it alone. The school deals with the student, and the student chooses their help. That is where a parent changes the outcome.
Can I attend my child’s hearing?
It depends entirely on the school’s rules. Some allow a support person or advisor, some restrict who that can be, and some hearings are closed. This is one of the first things worth finding out from the school’s published procedures, because assuming the high school rules apply is how parents get blindsided.
The school called me about a drinking violation. Does that mean I am part of the case now?
No. Colleges may notify parents of alcohol and drug violations for students under 21, but notification is not participation. The case still runs between the school and your child.
We cannot afford for this to go wrong. When is the right time to get help?
Before your child responds to the school. The early statements shape everything after them, and help that arrives after a finding is limited to the appeal, where the grounds are narrow and the deadline is short.
You Cannot Be in the Room. Experience Can Be.
The hardest part of a college misconduct case for a parent is that love and urgency have no standing in the process. Experience does. If your child has been accused, the most effective thing you can do is make sure they do not walk in alone. Attorney Richard Asselta defends students in disciplinary and academic misconduct cases at colleges nationwide, and consultations can include parents when the student agrees. Call 855-338-5299 before your child responds to the school.