A Georgetown University student fights against the expulsion of his father's bribes

A student from Georgetown University opposes the expulsion of his father in a corruption project at a higher education institution.

Adam Semprevivo filed a lawsuit on Wednesday morning against the private university of Washington, demanding that a district judge prevent the school from disciplining him and possibly canceling his academic credits. disciplinary discipline after his father in California. Sales Director Stephen Semprevivo admitted to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to get him accepted.

Steven Senne / AP, FILE

Stephen Semprevivo had hired a university admissions consultant, William "Rick" Singer, to help with his son's requests several years ago. But Adam Semprevivo, who has just finished his first year at the university, says his father, without his knowledge, has made an agreement with Singer "to take concrete steps" to introduce him to Georgetown, according to the complaint.

ABC News confirmed that Adam Semprevivo was one of two students expelled by Georgetown as part of the Singer case.

In the lawsuit, Adam Semprevivo claims to have been informed that his tennis coach of the time, Gordon Ernst, of Georgetown, would give him a recommendation, while Ernst was using one of the slots in the game. admission that had been awarded to him, as he recruited Adam Semprevivo. play tennis for the university.

Singer also wrote Adam Semprevivo's admission essay, which contained "falsified information" that "only dealt with Adam's love for tennis", and submitted his candidacy to Georgetown, typing Adam Semprevivo's name into the signature block. However, according to the complaint, the transcripts in high school, which were provided in Georgetown, "make no reference to Adam having ever played tennis".

"Despite the fact that these false statements could have been easily verified and debunked before Georgetown officially admitted Semprevivo in April 2016, no one in Georgetown has done so," the complaint says. "From 2017 to April 3, 2019, no one from Georgetown interviewed Semprevivo, met with Semprevivo, asked Semprevivo for explanations or attempted to sanction Semprevivo about matters relating to his admission."

Adam Semprevivo claims in the lawsuit that his acceptance in Georgetown "was not conditioned to play or be part of the tennis team", and that his score at SAT and his GPA in high school, for which he "received no help from Singer," were both in academic academic standards.

During his stay at the university, Adam Semprevivo maintained an average of 3.18, according to the lawsuit that he proposed to withdraw from the university with his credits acquired intact, in order to be able to be transferred in another school, and the university refused his request.

Although Georgetown did not want to comment on the dispute, a university spokesman told ABC News that in 2018 he "discovered irregularities in the sporting credentials of two students recruited to play tennis. both students were admitted ".

An internal investigation was opened and Ernst was asked to resign, the university announced, adding that she "had put in place a new policy regarding the recruitment of student athletes" and "put in place". place audits to check if the student athletes recruited were on the list of teams ".

Steven Senne / AP, FILE

"The University was not aware of any alleged criminal activity or acceptance of bribes by Mr. Ernst until the US Attorney's Office contacted him later," said the door. of the university, Meghan Dubyak.

Georgetown said that after the March indictments, they began contacting current students who might have been involved to give them a chance to respond. The university noted that "a twinkling statement or falsification of his knowledge in an application may result in the cancellation of the student's admission and his removal from Georgetown" .

As a result of the internal investigation, the university stated that it "informed two students of our intention to revoke their admission and to remove them from Georgetown, and each student case was treated individually and each student was given the opportunity to respond. and to provide information to the University. "

The complaint alleges that by doing so, Georgetown "flagrantly violated" its own procedures of the Honor Council system as part of its investigation of Adam Semprevivo and did not provide him with the procedure to submit him to disciplinary proceedings which may lead to the termination of his admission and his expulsion.

The lawsuit argues that the procedures of the university's honor board system require that a full investigation be conducted and that a report be presented to the executive board, the student having the right to present evidence before a decision is made.

When asked why this process had not taken place for the case of Adam Semprevivo, the university, through the intermediary of his lawyer, said that the system Honor did not apply because the problem concerns Adam Semprevivo's submissions to the university prior to his registration as a student, according to the lawsuit.

After his son was accepted to Georgetown, Stephen Semprevivo donated Singer's "$ 400,000 charity," according to the complaint. Federal prosecutors said that Singer had then paid Ernst for claiming that Adam Semprevivo was a rookie of the team.

Steven Senne / AP, FILE

Singer has been identified as the leader of a college admission scam nationwide. According to federal prosecutors, parents allegedly paid up to $ 6.5 million in bribes to Singer to allow their children to enter elite colleges, including Yale's universities. Stanford and Georgetown, and at the University of Southern California, California.

Last week, Stephen Semprevivo became the third parent to plead guilty in this huge scam. Meanwhile, Ernst pleaded not guilty to accepting $ 2.7 million in bribes to appoint at least 12 Georgetown candidates as team recruits.

Although this appears to be the first trial involving a student whose parents have been accused of being involved in the scheme, this is not the first civil trial arising from the scheme itself.

In March, Erica Olsen and Kalea Woods, students at Stanford University, filed a class-action lawsuit against eight colleges, including USC, Stanford, UCLA and Georgetown.

Olsen and Woods both claim to have been negatively affected by the so-called cheat ploy and claimed more than $ 5 million in damages, claiming that "unqualified students found themselves in very high university admission lists". selective, while those who respected the rules and did not have parents who corrupt the university were denied. "

They also alleged that their diplomas had decreased because of the so-called scandal.