Antonin Scalia, the famously conservative Supreme Court justice, was found dead this morning. (AP Images)

There were the conversations that George Mason University expected to hear happening after deciding to rename its law school for Justice Antonin Scalia, and then there were the ones that they really should have seen coming. Namely, the acronym for The Antonin Scalia School of Law: ASSoL or ASSLaw.

Shortly after receiving word of a $10 million from the Charles Koch Foundation and $20 million from an anonymous donor, contingent upon renaming the school, GMU announced the new name. The Twitter jokes, and speculations about it being an April Fools joke, poured forth.

The school noticed what they are politely terming the “acronym controversy” and said they would make a change.

“The name initially announced—The Antonin Scalia School of Law—has caused some acronym controversy on social media. The Antonin Scalia Law School is a logical substitute,” dean Henry Butler wrote in a letter to students.

Butler also addressed complaints about the decision making behind name choice, saying that “Unfortunately, contingent gifts are not typically subject to widespread discussion-they are treated as confidential until the donor(s) and potential recipient(s) can come to terms.”

He added that it wasn’t slated to be announced until after the the university’s Board of Visitors voted on the conditional gift/name change, but NPR’s Nina Totenberg broke the news first.

The school expects that the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia will approve the new name on July 1.

While many have vowed to keep ASSLaw alive, others have taken up a whole new line of Twitter reasoning for the acronym of The Antonin Scalia Law School, or ASLS.

Filed Under: antonin scalia, antonin scalia school of law, asls, asslaw, assol, george mason, gmu, scalia, supreme court,