In an official Instagram statement today, the School of Law rejected the Law Colloquium’s account of an “abusive” incident during a postgraduate event during Freshers’ Week, as outlined on their website.
The Law Colloquium claims that chair Lukian Pudliak was “publicly assaulted with abusive language” at a postgraduate coffee event on September 16ᵗʰ with “no acknowledgement of the seriousness of the abuse, and no attempt to investigate what happened”, calling the silence “deeply disappointing and highly suspicious”. The account also contains several images depicting the incident that appear to be AI-generated.
In a statement today, the Law School said it was aware of the account, and that “the account published by the TCD Law Students Colloquium bears no relationship to what occurred”. The Law School also added that, “The TCD Law Students Colloquium has no publicly identified members other than its chairperson. It does not exist as a recognised College society, it has no relationship to the Law School, and it is prohibited from holding events on campus.” The Law School statement also clarified that representatives from the Junior Dean’s office were present at the incident and “spoke to all students and staff involved.”
Earlier this week, Pudliak supplied the University Times with a letter dated September 17ᵗʰ from the college informing him that he had been excluded from College Buildings. It said that this was due to “recent behaviour while presenting [himself] at the School of Law”, adding that this was “in the best interest for [Pudliak] and [college] staff members that [Pudliak] be excluded from College Buildings with immediate effect.” The Secretary’s office has been contacted to verify the authenticity of the letter, but its metadata indicates that it is a scanned physical letter and not an AI-generated file.
This represents another development in the ongoing dispute between the Law School and the Law Colloquium. In the summer, the Law Colloquium was instructed to cease and desist from all use of Trinity branding for their activities following alleged governance issues. The Colloquium has continued its activities and its use of Trinity branding, though Pudliak appears to be the sole member of the Law Colloquium’s “emergency committee”.
On August 24ᵗʰ, the Law Colloquium held an “open meeting” hosted on their Instagram Live, which the University Times attended. During the meeting, after about 10 minutes of darkness, the live stream showed Pudliak in an academic integrity tribunal on Zoom over his alleged undisclosed use of generative artificial intelligence for academic work. Shortly thereafter, the meeting was shut down when the school explained that theirs was the official recording, and any other recording of the meeting constituted a breach of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Pudliak continued the stream, and the tribunal was shut down and referred to the Junior Dean’s office.
Since then, the Law Colloquium has continued posting (apparently AI generated) statements and events, ranging from memorialising the 25th anniversary of September 11th, 2001, to cartoons depicting Trinity security and bureaucracy colluding against him with imagery like “truth” in a bin of “disposable ideas”.
Most recently, the School of Law has promoted a new Law Student Symposium that appears to fill the gap left by the exit of the Law Colloquium, which will also hold an annual student conference. The post from the Law Colloquium on the matter said, “Same event. Different organisation?”
The Law Colloquium has been contacted for comment.
