More than 100 days after it began, the investigation into SUCOLitis, the satirical blog dedicated to Syracuse University’s College of Law, is reaching an end.

Len Audaer, the second-year law student who has been under investigation for harassment since October, and lawyer Mark Blum have been in mediations with a federal judge and representatives from the law school for the past two Mondays. The meetings have each lasted about three hours, Audaer said. The group hopes it will be able to come to an agreement within the next week, he said.

‘We’ll sign all the paperwork, and that will be the end of the matter,’ Audaer said. He could not release specific details about the agreement at this point.

SUCOLitis, a WordPress blog, began publishing online in the fall. Satirical posts about the law school, which used names of real law school students and professors, covered topics such as the attractiveness of the first-year class. The blog went private on Oct. 20, and members could view posts if they had a password. But faculty prosecutor Gregory Germain requested Audaer contact the writers behind SUCOLitis and have the site shut down as part of the settlement. The site was shut down within the last few days, but Audaer said he could not give specifics on how or when.

Germain proposed settling the matter with a federal judge, Audaer said. Germain suggested Judge George Lowe for the position, and Audaer said he and his lawyer agreed. The law school is paying for Lowe to help with the settlement, Audaer said, although he did not know how much. Assistant faculty prosecutor Steven Wechsler has also been present at the meetings.

The settlement is confidential and cannot be discussed, Germain said. As the faculty prosecutor, Germain said it is his job to attempt to resolve disputes whenever possible, but he could not discuss who made the suggestion to move forward with the settlement.

Germain said he has no way of knowing when the discussions will end, but he hopes it will be soon.

Audaer will not confirm or deny that he is associated with the blog in any way. In an Oct. 18 meeting with Tomas Gonzalez, senior assistant dean of student life, Audaer said he was told that a female complainant specifically named him. She filed a complaint against him after reading a post on SUCOLitis that said she had hooked up with more than one male law school student at the start of the semester, Audaer said.

At the law school’s Student Bar Association’s meeting Tuesday night, SBA President Steven Goodstadt invited Germain to speak and answer questions about the investigation. Ed Mullaney, an SBA senator and second-year law student spoke out against the investigation.

Mullaney said the blog and how the investigation was handled are some things that had divided students at the law school and frustrated students and staff. He said he spoke at the meeting because he felt it was important to vocalize student opinion.

Mullaney said at the meeting that the investigation has not been handled well because it has gone on too long and has negatively affected the school’s reputation. He said the law school members needed to come together as a community and put the issue behind them.

The blog investigation, which has received national press, is not the only matter the law school is dealing with. The law school received the lowest bar-exam passing rate of the 15 American Bar Association’s accredited law schools in New York state, according to statistics released by the New York Law Journal in December. Seventy percent of SU’s first-time exam takers passed the July bar exam.

Hannah Arterian, dean of the College of Law, did not respond to interview requests to speak about SUCOLitis or the law school’s ranking.

Audaer said he thought settling the matter in this way was fair and respectable of the law school. He said the issue is now ‘old news,’ and he is glad to see it not go to trial, which would mean continuing the investigation into the spring semester.

‘It feels great,’ Audaer said. ‘I can start a new semester without this dragging on.’

dkmcbrid@syr.edu

A previous version of this article appeared online at dailyorange.com on Jan. 20. 

Published on January 23, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Dara: dkmcbrid@syr.edu | @daramcbride