Last week, George Mason University decided to honor late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (and get $20 million from an anonymous Scalia admirer) by renaming the law school the Antonin Scalia School of Law. On Monday, somebody at the school either decided to take a look at the acronym, or perhaps read her Twitter feed. Officially, the law schools still retains its new original name, but on its website and promotional material, it's now called the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason — ASLS instead of ASSoL.
"A tentative but not finalized decision was made to nip the name-needling in the bud and rearrange the words," a "person familiar with the school’s internal discussions" told The Wall Street Journal. "A school spokesman declined to comment." The Journal's Jacob Gorshman suggests that "Justice Scalia, famous for his puckish sense of humor, would be amused" by the first acronym, and given that universities have marketing departments, maybe this has been an elaborate publicity stunt. Still, to use the name of a recently deceased eminent American jurist for something so crude, you'd have to be a real.... Oh.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Political cartoons for November 1Cartoons Saturday's political cartoons include insurance premiums, early voting in NYC, and more
-
Salted caramel and chocolate tart recipeThe Week Recommends Delicious dessert can be made with any biscuits you fancy
-
Meet Ireland’s new socialist presidentIn the Spotlight Landslide victory of former barrister and ‘outsider’ Catherine Connolly could ‘mark a turning point’ in anti-establishment politics
-
ABC News to pay $15M in Trump defamation suitSpeed Read The lawsuit stemmed from George Stephanopoulos' on-air assertion that Trump was found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll
-
Judge blocks Louisiana 10 Commandments lawSpeed Read U.S. District Judge John deGravelles ruled that a law ordering schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms was unconstitutional
-
ATF finalizes rule to close 'gun show loophole'Speed Read Biden moves to expand background checks for gun buyers
-
Hong Kong passes tough new security lawSpeed Read It will allow the government to further suppress all forms of dissent
-
France enshrines abortion rights in constitutionspeed read It became the first country to make abortion a constitutional right
-
Texas executes man despite contested evidenceSpeed Read Texas rejected calls for a rehearing of Ivan Cantu's case amid recanted testimony and allegations of suppressed exculpatory evidence
-
Supreme Court wary of state social media regulationsSpeed Read A majority of justices appeared skeptical that Texas and Florida were lawfully protecting the free speech rights of users
-
Greece legalizes same-sex marriageSpeed Read Greece becomes the first Orthodox Christian country to enshrine marriage equality in law
