Having SQL Server choose and show one record over other - sql

Question

Ok, hopefully I can explain this accurately. I work in SQL Server, and I am trying to get one row from a table that will show multiple rows for the same person for various reasons.
There is a column called college_attend which will show either New or Cont for each student.
My issue: my initial query narrows down the rows I'm pulling by Academic Year, which consists of two semesters: Fall of one year, and Spring of the following to create an academic year. This is why there are two rows returned for some students.
Basically, I need to generate an accurate count of those that are "New" and those that are "Cont", but I don't want both records for the same student counted. They will have two records because they will have one for spring and one for fall (usually). So if a student is "New" in fall, they will have a "Cont" record for spring. I want the query to show ONLY the "New" record if they have both a "New' and "Cont" record, and count it (which I will do in Report Builder). The other students will basically have two records that are "Cont": one for fall, and one "Cont" for spring, and so those would be considered the continuing ones or "Cont".
Here is the basic query I have so far:
SELECT DISTINCT
people.people_id,
people.last_name,
people.first_name,
academic.college_attend AS NewORCont,
academic.academic_year,
academic.academic_term,
FROM
academic
INNER JOIN
people ON people.people_id = academic.people_id
INNER JOIN
academiccalendar acc ON acc.academic_year = academic.academic_year
AND acc.academic_term = academic.academic_term
AND acc.true_academic_year = #Academic_year
I'm not sure if this can be done with a CASE statement? I thought of a GROUP BY, but then SQL Server will want me to add all of my columns to the GROUP BY clause, and that ends up negating the purpose of the grouping in the first place.
Just a sample of what I work with for each student:
People ID
Last
First
NeworCont
12345
Soanso
Guy
New
12345
Soanso
Guy
Cont
32345
Person
Nancy
Cont
32345
Person
Nancy
Cont
55555
Smith
John
New
55555
Smith
John
Cont
---------
------
-------
----------
Hopefully this sheds some light on the duplicate record issue I mentioned.

Answer 1

Without sample data its awkward to visualize the problem, and without the expected results specified it's also unclear what you want as the outcome. Perhaps this will assist, it will limit the results to only those who have both 'New' and 'Cont' in a single "true academic year" but the count seems redundant as this (I imagine) will always be 2 (being 1 New term and 1 Cont term)
SELECT
people.people_id
, people.last_name
, people.first_name
, acc.true_academic_year
, count(*) AS count_of
FROM academic
INNER JOIN people ON people.people_id = academic.people_id
INNER JOIN academiccalendar acc ON acc.academic_year = academic.academic_year
AND acc.academic_term = academic.academic_term
AND acc.true_academic_year = #Academic_year
GROUP BY
people.people_id
, people.last_name
, people.first_name
, acc.true_academic_year
HAVING MAX(academic.college_attend) = 'New'
AND MIN(academic.college_attend) = 'Cont'