Georgetown parent Stephen Semprevivo and 12 other university parents pleaded guilty to fraud for involvement in a college admissions bribery scheme in a Boston federal court Monday.
The plea comes after the Georgetown University Student Association senate voted against a resolution to urge the university to expel current students and rescind the degrees of alumni implicated in admissions fraud in a Sunday meeting.
Semprevivo is pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud after the Department of Justice indicted 50 people, including five Georgetown parents and former Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst, on March 12. Semprevivo, whose son currently attends Georgetown and is studying abroad this semester, paid an intermediary $400,000 to give his son an advantage in the admissions process, according to the indictment.
Elizabeth and Manuel Henriquez, Elisabeth Kimmel and Douglas Hodge, who have or had children at Georgetown between 2013 and 2019, were also charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud but have not yet issued a plea and await future hearings.
The Henriquezes, Kimmel and Hodge received additional charges in a superseding indictment of money laundering Tuesday for conspiring to launder bribes through a charity run and transferring money into the United States to promote the fraud.
Ernst, who left Georgetown in June 2018 and resigned from his position as women’s tennis head coach at the University of Rhode Island on March 22, pleaded not guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge March 25. He allegedly falsely designated 12 students as tennis recruits in Georgetown’s admissions process for $2.7 million in bribes, according to the indictment.
Georgetown has not taken action against current students Adam Semprevivo (COL ’20) or Isabelle Henriquez (COL ’20) since the March 12 indictment. (Full disclosure: Semprevivo formerly served as the cartoonist for The Hoya.)
The university is evaluating the indictment, University President John J. DeGioia wrote in a March 15 campuswide email.
“Now that the government’s investigation has detailed the extent of the alleged fraud, we are reviewing the indictment and will take appropriate action,” DeGioia wrote.
GUSA Senator Julio Salmeron-Perla (SFS ’22) voted against the resolution. Salmeron-Perla said that while admissions fraud is unacceptable, a reprimand would distract from university-led investigations.
“I totally am upset about these people. They are not a part of our community because they did not uphold the ideals of honor and integrity,” Salmeron-Perla said. “At the same time, I don’t think that us condemning these students will do anything because I personally feel that it will just cloud the ongoing investigations.”
Instead of condemning Georgetown students, GUSA should support the Georgetown communities most adversely affected by admissions fraud, according to Salmeron-Perla.
“A more proactive way to approach this would be to pass a resolution that reaffirms all the other students that worked hard to get here, all the other communities that worked really hard despite all the obstacles that they had to get into Georgetown,” Salmeron-Perla said. “And so I feel like that we should pass a resolution in support of them.”
The GUSA resolution failed after 11 of the 19 senators in attendance voted against it.
GUSA Senator Evan Farrara (COL ’19) introduced a previous version of the resolution, titled “A Resolution to Condemn Students Found Guilty of Admissions Fraud,” in a ways and means committee meeting April 2. This iteration of the resolution failed after four of six committee members voted against it.
Farrara said GUSA, as a group of representatives for the student body, is responsible for speaking out against wrongdoing.
“There have been really no organizations on campus that have been saying that students and Georgetown need to take certain actions, and that’s because that’s what GUSA’s role is, and so the reason it needs to be said now is so we can establish and react to those who are hurting at Georgetown and say, ‘this is what GUSA thinks,’” Farrara said in an interview with The Hoya.
Georgetown alumnus and admissions interviewer Mickey Lee (COL ’05) called for the university to rescind the degrees and admission of students implicated in the scheme in a March 13 petition. The letter, addressed to DeGioia and University Provost Robert Groves now has over 19,500 signatures.
Other universities mentioned in the March 12 indictment, including Yale University, University of Southern California and Stanford University, rescinded the admission of several students implicated in the bribery scheme.
GUSA must set an example for other students by taking initiative on campus issues such as admissions fraud, according to Dylan Hughes (COL ’19), senate chair of the ethics and oversight committee and a co-sponsor of the initial bill with Ferrara.
“I believe that this type of resolution is an important moral stance that GUSA should take and that it is encouraging to students when they see GUSA taking that kind of action,” Hughes said. “I think that this was the most straightforward way to do that.”
GUSA Senate Speaker Eliza Lafferty (COL ’21), who voted against the resolution in the ways and means committee meeting and in the senate at large, disagreed with Hughes and said that the role of GUSA should be to support students rather than reprimand them.
“I don’t support language that condemns students. I don’t think that’s our place to condemn students in general,” Lafferty said in an interview with The Hoya. “My main reason is that there are university processes that I don’t feel like the senate should be taking that place.”
Correction: The article was updated April 9 to reflect that there were 19 senators in attendance at the resolution vote, and to update the spelling of Ferrara’s name.
Angie Zunker • Apr 27, 2019 at 1:06 am
Thank you for your comment!!!!!! Comparing it to Brock Turner is perfect. Let’s not just say “woohoo” to all the students who were admitted fairly. Justice MUST be served. Isabelle Henriquez, who KNEW SHE CHEATED ON THE SAT, should be expelled immediately!!! People are arrested and put in jail for stealing food and low-cost items from retail stores. Why is it that rich people can get away with so much in this country???
Mickey Lee • Apr 27, 2019 at 2:47 pm
You’re welcome, Angie! Just telling it like it really is.
If you haven’t already done so, please sign and share my online petition I started regarding this topic:
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/865/429/235/rescind-admissions-and-degrees-to-students-involved-in-the-college-admission-bribery-scheme/
Concerned • Apr 11, 2019 at 8:57 pm
Absolutely agree with Mikey Lee. I cannot believe the fraud Hodge kid is going to be a doctor now. Yes it happens all the time, but can you imagine knowingly being a patient of a hack med student?
By not penalizing the cheating graduates and current students because of “compassion,” Georgetown is lowering the value of its diploma to nothing. If they do not penalize now, some employer will look at a legitimate Georgetown grad and wonder if he/she was one of the hacks. Mikey is right, those 11 who voted against the resolution are from the same background and are protecting their own.
You want to show compassion? Show it for deserving students who were wait-listed and rejected because Isabelle Henriquez’s daddy bought her place – that too illegally. Feel bad for the hundreds of internship applicants who lost at the hedge funds where she interned despite having no qualifications other than daddy’s connections. For every role she had, I guarantee you, she pushed out worthy candidates 100 times her merit. I am from the same industry and I have seen many unworthy spawns of nepotism coast in better jobs, they are the reason so many of these financial powerhouses collapse and take the economy with them.
Mickey Lee • Apr 9, 2019 at 8:15 am
The precise reason why we have a JUDGE AARON PERSKY to sympathize with a BROCK TURNER and only dole out 1/28 of the maximum allowed sentence is the same reason why we have PEOPLE SYMPATHIZING WITH THESE CHEATER who scammed their way into the school: knowingly or not, all of them feel that socioeconomically wealthy individuals deserve sympathy (i.e. a second chance) without giving the same benefit of the doubt or “compassion” to those who are not so well-off. This perpetuates a system of enabling criminal behavior by those who are socioeconomically powerful and well-connected, continuing the rotten state of corruption among executives and heads of government/politics, business, medicine (e.g. Schuyler Hodge is a now med student at FIU), etc.
It is the responsibility of elite universities like Georgetown to properly educate our future leaders by instilling basic morality and ethics as well as demonstrating that consequences for criminal actions have consequences–including those with socioeconomic and political clout. Otherwise, the university is passively cultivating a permissive environment for executive corruption as it is currently doing through its non-action.
Since the university has been very passive and slow to take appropriate measures, it then falls on us as the alumni and students to stand and demand that the university rescind fraudulent admissions and subsequent fraudulently-attained degrees.
Going back to the Brock Turner argument, Judge Persky twisted the situation by portraying Turner as the victim at the expense of the real victims. The same is true for those who are unwilling to demand rescinding of admissions and degrees of these admissions cheats: they don’t care about justice for the ACTUAL VICTIMS. In this case, the victims include those who got rejected admissions because these 12 socioeconomically-advantaged and undeserving criminals bribed their way into Georgetown.
The vast larger group of victims is the vast majority of the students and alumni who legitimately earned their admissions/degrees but will see the value of their degrees tarnished by being associated with their fraudulent peers. This would be easily solved by rescinding the degrees and admissions of these 12 frauds.
Other victims include university faculty and staff whose place of employment has become one of the centers of the current scandal. At the least, the prestige of their workplace has devolved into a laughingstock among academics, potential applicants, and recruiters, but at worst, an institution that was persistently permissive of cheating and corruption by those financially capable of doing so THEN unwilling to take proper actions for the past 2 years following Ernst’s resignation.
Whenever anyone wants there to be “compassion” for these cheating frauds, the most logical response should be, “Why should we pity the criminals at the expense of the REAL victims?”
Them, the next question should be, “Are you guilty of cheating and fraud? Otherwise, why would it bother you for demanding justice for the actual victims?”
In short, don’t be a Judge Persky. Don’t enable future Brock Turners because of your own sense of “compassion” is, at best, no better than misplaced socioeconomic prejudice and, at worst, a delusional moral septic tank.