A student accused of selling LSD at Columbia University pleaded guilty yesterday to attempted drug possession, resolving the last case in a takedown of an on-campus drug ring.
Adam Klein was the last of five students to plead guilty in the case, which authorities called the biggest in recent memory against drug dealing at a city college.
The case spurred a discussion of student drug use and questions of privilege and punishment from the New York Post’s editorial page to Time magazine’s Web site.
Klein, 21, is expected to get five years’ probation at sentencing, which is scheduled for Feb. 28.
The students formed a loose-knit network that sold drugs from marijuana to ecstasy to cocaine out of dorm rooms and fraternity houses, with each student specializing in certain drugs, according to the city’s special narcotics prosecutor, Bridget Brennan.
An undercover officer bought more than $11,000 worth of drugs from the group over five months, prosecutors said.
Lawyers for several of the students, including Klein, portrayed them as talented young men who got derailed by drug problems in college.