The College Fix

Kept taking his tuition while ignoring red flags about his admission

If you’ve ever been tempted to feel sorry for colleges caught up in the recent admissions scandal, look at Georgetown University’s latest abomination.

It expelled a student after he sued the Catholic university for violating his due process in trying to discipline him for his father’s sins. Ten hours after, to be exact.

In a federal lawsuit that strongly resembles those filed by students accused of sexual misconduct, Adam Semprevivo claims the university blatantly violated its own rules in order to punish him and nullify his academic credits, USA Today reports.

He’s a junior, and the Semprevivo family has already paid more than $200,000 in tuition that will be wasted if he can’t keep the credits he’s earned.

His father Stephen took a plea deal earlier this month, admitting to paying $400,000 to a “sham nonprofit” run by the admissions scandal ringleader Rick Singer. Some of that money was directed to the school’s tennis coach at the time, Gordon Ernst, who falsely designated Adam as a tennis player, according to the plea.

The thing is that Georgetown was already suspicious of Ernst’s “irregularities” and started investigating him the year after Adam was admitted. The university put Ernst on leave in December 2017 and fired him months later, yet continued to “knowingly accept tuition payments” for Adam and let him earn academic credits.

Georgetown also inexplicably ignored the inconsistency between Adam’s transcripts, which say he’s a basketball player, and the application allegedly filled out by Singer, which emphasizes Adam’s tennis credentials.

Adam claims he was not in on the scheme allegedly perpetrated by his father and Singer. His SAT score and college and high school GPAs are within the university’s academic standards, leading him to believe he was accepted on merit.

The university couldn’t wait for a neutral and fair proceeding to play out on the propriety of Adam’s admission, the student alleged.

Here is where the allegations start to resemble Title IX discrimination lawsuits: Georgetown tried to force Adam into a “disciplinary proceeding not authorized” by its student handbook, didn’t give him written notice of the complaint and never even informed him of his rights. He pointed out the university’s failures throughout the proceeding but it ignored him. Georgetown even told him he would be punished before the investigation had finished, Adam claims.

When it became clear that Georgetown wouldn’t let Adam withdraw and keep his credits, he filed suit to prevent his punishment. His lawyer said the lawsuit was filed electronically at 2 a.m. Wednesday, yet Georgetown expelled him by noon.

This is dirtbag, retaliatory behavior by the scum who run this speech-suppressing university. Georgetown has no legitimate reason to expel Adam so quickly, other than to shorten its embarrassment in the admissions scandal, which massively backfired.

It clearly didn’t want to risk the chance that Adam would be cleared in the proceeding, so it crippled his ability to defend himself. Naturally, the university claims that it’s not bound by its contractual promises to Adam because the alleged wrongdoing happened before he was accepted.

A federal judge may not agree, given that Georgetown kept sucking down Adam’s tuition money for two years after it started investigating Ernst. It can’t portray itself as a victim. It failed to do due diligence on Adam’s application, then threw him under the bus when the admissions scandal was exposed.

If there’s one silver lining to the expanding targets of due-process violations in college disciplinary proceedings, it’s that more and more of the American public is finally seeing the rot at the heart of elite higher education.

MORE: Identity of Georgetown scammer challenges Left’s narrative

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter