We gave it up as part of the “new branding”. What a mistake
If we are talking about the same thing, the reason St. Joe's is SJU and our logo branding was STJ was that St. Joe's registered the internet domain sju.edu for St. Joseph's University. By the time we even thought of having a university website it was long gone.
In the early days of the internet, registrations for names that we associate with major corporations were snapped up early by either smaller companies with similar names or by tech savvy profiteers who would then sell them to corporations wanting that domain. Sites such as delta.com did not direct users to the airline, but to a smaller company. Those corporations then had to either buy the domain name from the site owner, or sue them if the registered name clearly and solely was identified with a major corporation (think Walmart, IBM, etc.)
Although in and around NYC, SJU meant and still means St. Johns, St.Joe's in Philly also identified as such, so there was no intentional deception.
We rebranded rather than keep SJU and have potential applicants be directed to St. Joe's sju.edu, which I'm sure still happens on a daily basis.
I guess we could have offered a hefty sum to buy sju.edu from St. Joe's but I'd be pretty sure that a) St. John's would not have coughed up major $$ and b) St. Joe's had no interest in selling. From a St. John's perspective they likely wondered if this website thing was a short lived fad.
In terms of domain registration, it was/is a common practice for profiteers to closely watch domain registration expirations and quickly register expired domsins with sufficient traffic, redirecting to a central website. Smsller companies had their domsins held for ransom and had to pay the new owner. It happened to my company a few times over the years.