Georgetown Student Sues to Bar School From Punishing Him After Dad Paid Off Coach for Admission

(Bloomberg) — A Georgetown University student sued to block the school from punishing him because his father paid off a tennis coach to obtain a “recruited” recommendation that helped him win admission to the prestigious college.

Adam Semprevivo filed his lawsuit Wednesday, seeking a court order that would prevent the university from expelling him or imposing other sanctions. His father, Stephen Semprevivo, pleaded guilty in the college admissions scandal last week.

The younger Semprevivo, who said he scored a 1,980 on his SAT admissions exam and maintains a 3.18 grade point average as a junior at Georgetown, said he was unaware his father had paid bribes to win him admission.

In 2017, he added, the university knew of “irregularities” in tennis coach Gordon Ernst’s recruitment practices in 2017 and placed him on leave. Knowing that, Georgetown should have been able to review Semprevivo’s application thoroughly in 2016 and is now employing an “arbitrary and capricious disciplinary process,” he said.

“Despite the fact that these misrepresentations could have been easily verified and debunked before Georgetown formally admitted Semprevivo in April 2016, no one at Georgetown did so,” he said in his breach-of-contract complaint.

Stephen Semprevivo, who has served as chief strategy and growth officer at Cydcor LLC, admitted in federal court in Boston that his son didn’t even play competitive tennis. Semprevivo is one of 33 parents caught up in the biggest college-admissions scam the Justice Department has ever prosecuted.