After further review it looks like that by adding those as a left outer join by using

on p.people_code_id=t.people_code_id

and t.record_type='O'

and t.academic_term='Fall'

and t.academic_year='2007'

its pulling IF they have a fall 2007 "o" record. If not, its just pulling their people record and using the data contained in the academic table for my case calulations, using the rest of the where clause? So my Case statement is seeing nothing in the transcriptgpa table, then using the rest of the where clause for definition. Am i close?

*edit*

I also notice now the people who are appearing are showing a class level of "null". Probably because they dont have any data in the transcriptgpa table, is their any way to use only the values in the acadmic table IF, they dont have data in the transcriptgpa table? Does this make sense?