(Excerpts from Inside Higher Ed News)

• Khoury, the father of a Georgetown University student, was acquitted Thursday on charges that he paid $180,000 in cash to Gordon Ernst, Georgetown’s tennis coach, to have his daughter admitted, The New York Times reported.
• Khoury’s lawyer, Roy Black, said, “Georgetown had a team of people that researched what the father did, what his income was, how much their homes cost. They figured they could get somewhere between one and five million from him, that’s how cynical this is.”
• Black also said, “We proved beyond any doubt that wealth is a huge factor in getting admitted into these elite universities—I’m not talking about the government-funded universities, I’m talking about the Ivy Leagues and Georgetowns.”
• Rollins, a U.S. attorney from Massachusetts, where the case was prosecuted, issued a statement on the acquittal.
• “Although we respect the jury’s verdict, we are disappointed,” Rollins said. “The government believes that the conduct and facts in this case warranted Mr. Khoury’s prosecution. Despite today’s verdict, this investigation, as well as the dozens of successful ‘Varsity Blues’ prosecutions, have resulted in enormous and systemic changes in the college admissions process. These cases writ large have exposed the disturbing, improper and inequitable role that wealth and privilege can play in distorting a system that is supposed to be merit based.
• While the case was not among the Varsity Blues cases, its allegations were quite similar.