Mutiny at Law School

Below is a Chronicle of Higher Education article from the May 18, 2007 edition. The premise of the article revolves around the Ave Maria situation and their law school which just gained full accreditation in 2005. If you are not familiar with "the Ave Maria situation" I will give a quick recap.

Ave Maria college was founded by Thomas Monaghan, Domino's Pizza Billionaire, in Michigan. The intent to go with this is to create a truly Catholic college (the law school at this time doesn't seem to be directly affiliated with Ave Maria University but they are both run by Monaghan and seem to be based out of the same Ave Maria Foundation) to stimulate learning and provide a Catholic environment in which to mold these young minds. Monaghan also desired to build a "Catholic" town to go with the school, kind of religious haven for those that want to practice strict Catholic traditions. However, the town deal fell apart in Michigan due to zoning issues (allegedly) and Monaghan shifted his focus to Florida in which he has constructed the town and created Ave Maria University. Now Monaghan's wish is to also move Ave Maria School of Law to Florida and it is being met with quite a bit of resistance from the faculty, hence the below article. Enjoy.


Conflict Over Relocation Divides a Catholic Law School

Professors say they have not been part of the decision to move from Michigan to Florida

By KATHERINE MANGAN

A mutiny may be brewing at a Catholic law school whose board has voted to pack it up and move it from Ann Arbor, Mich., to a rural community in southwest Florida.

More than half of the professors at Ave Maria School of Law are fighting the move to Ave Maria, Fla., the town being created by Thomas S. Monaghan, the Domino's Pizza mogul who founded the law school eight years ago.

Critics, including many alumni and students, say the move to the Catholic-oriented town between Naples and Immokalee, Fla., would jeopardize the independent law school's progress. They accuse Mr. Monaghan of moving a successful law school to prop up a struggling university in a town that has already attracted controversy. A spokesman for Ave Maria said Mr. Monaghan was not available for comment.

Supporters of the move counter that a small group of faculty members is undermining the institution by fighting a plan that could boost the law school to national prominence and promise long-term financial stability.

"We'll be moving to an area of the country that not only is growing, but economically prosperous, with a large and growing Catholic population," said Eugene R. Milhizer, associate dean and associate professor of law. Being located near Ave Maria University, a Catholic institution, will benefit students and faculty members, he said, and the law school will have the advantage of being the only one in the area.

The board's February vote to move the law school to Florida in the summer of 2009 has driven a wedge into a school that just a few years ago was celebrating an auspicious start. Mr. Monaghan founded the law school after selling his pizza empire for $1-billion in 1998. The school, which promised a "seriously Catholic" legal education, began offering classes in 2000. Its first graduating class had the highest bar passage rates in the state, and its graduates landed prestigious clerkships.

"The place was really moving and doing well," said Charles E. Rice, a professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame Law School who believes his opposition to the move cost him his job at Ave Maria. "Morale was great, and then we get this announcement that Tom wants to move the school to Florida, where there was nothing there to receive it."

"The faculty immediately had questions about the move, and they were basically told to shut up," said Mr. Rice, who was a member of the founding governing board at Ave Maria's law school until the administration instituted two-term limits — a move he believes was intended to boot him off.

No Confidence

Last April a majority of the faculty voted no confidence in the law school's dean, Bernard Dobranski, citing concerns over academic freedom and faculty governance. The school's alumni association followed with its own no-confidence vote. The law school's board responded with a terse note of support for the dean.

In May, Mr. Rice circulated a letter in which he criticized the board's decision to move, saying it would have made more sense to open a satellite campus in Florida first (an idea deemed too expensive). "You'd be leaving Ann Arbor, Mich., which is a great intellectual center, and going down to Corkscrew Swamp," he said, referring to a sanctuary near Immokalee. "Go figure."

The week before fall classes began, Mr. Rice was told his contract as a visiting professor would not be extended, his office was packed up, and his belongings were shipped to his home.

Since then, faculty members who oppose the move have been posting their complaints as a group on blogs like Mirror of Justice, which focuses on Catholic legal theory.

Eleven of the law school's 18 faculty members are believed to be opposed to the move, but the group's organizers would only say that "all but a few" of the faculty signed off on the Web postings.

In a posting late last month, the group, whose members say they fear retribution if they speak out individually, accused the dean of retaliating against critics and monitoring their e-mail messages and computers — charges Mr. Dobranski denied.

They said faculty committees that used to be chaired by tenured faculty members are now headed by "the few faculty members whom the dean believes to be loyal to him."

"Cumulatively, such intimidation and bullying has created an intolerable atmosphere of fear and contempt at our school," the Web post states.

The dean called those accusations "absurd." He said he replaced the committee chairs because they were not doing a good job and decided not to renew Mr. Rice's contract as a visiting professor after he circulated another letter that disparaged the board of governors. Mr. Dobranski said that he had no problem with faculty members publicly disagreeing with the decision to move to Florida, but he added that he would not tolerate actions that "undermine" the law school.

An Alternate Plan

One faculty member who is fighting the move says that he and his colleagues have found at least one university willing to acquire the law school and allow it to remain in Ann Arbor, but that the administration won't present the idea to the board for consideration. Mr. Dobranski said no one had presented a viable alternative plan to finance the law school.

"The idea that a group of faculty could take the law school and give it to another university is absurd," the dean said.

The message posted on the Catholic blog said it made no sense "to leave a well-populated area, where a law school has made valuable contacts with the profession and for its students over the last seven years, to move 1,300 miles to a new and untested community, isolated from most of the kinds of social networks in which legal communities thrive."

The dean conceded that he, too, was initially uncertain about the move, but eventually decided that it would help the law school grow. "When the idea first surfaced, I can't say I jumped for joy," he said.

He became convinced that Naples, less than 30 miles from Ave Maria, is a thriving city whose legal community has embraced the law school's move. Students will have plenty of opportunities for internships and jobs, he said.

However, critics worry that the move could jeopardize the law school's standing with the American Bar Association, which gave the law school provisional accreditation in 2002 and full accreditation in 2005.

When a law school makes a major change in its program, the bar has to "acquiesce" to the move. The dean said he had informally notified the association of the law school's plans and was preparing a formal report.

Meanwhile, the bar association is reviewing a complaint that, among other things, faculty members are being cut out of decision making. ABA rules require that faculty members have "a significant role in determining educational policy" at an accredited law school. Mr. Dobranski countered that faculty members have had at least a dozen opportunities to comment on the relocation.

Leo L. Clarke is a spokesman for the faculty members who oppose the move. He was a tenure-track associate professor at Ave Maria from 2001 to 2003, when he left to return to private practice. He said he expected few faculty members would be willing to move to Florida. "The student body turns over every three years, but if you lose the faculty, it's not the same entity at all," he said. "The alumni see this move as a desertion of what they invested in."

Chris McGowan, a graduate of Ave Maria's 2003 inaugural class, agreed. "We started with so much promise and potential, and today I believe the community is severely fractured and increasingly polarized," he said. "Many alumni are absolutely stunned that the board has been so dismissive of our concerns."

Stressing that he was speaking for himself and not the alumni board he serves on, he added: "I was excited that we were going to be engaging in a secular society, but moving to Ave Maria, Fla., would be running away to live in a cocoon."

Independent or Not?

This isn't the first time Mr. Monaghan has started a school in Michigan and later shifted his focus to Florida. After founding Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Mich., in 1998, he decided four years later to close it so he could create the university and town of Ave Maria in Florida. (Zoning problems prevented him from realizing his dream in Michigan.)

Founded in 2003, Ave Maria University is offering classes at its temporary campus in Naples while its campus in Ave Maria is built. Mr. Monaghan has been on the defensive since he told area newspapers that he and a Florida land developer planned to build a Catholic town that hewed to a strict morality.

In a May 2004 speech, Mr. Monaghan said: "We'll own all commercial real estate. That means we will be able to control what goes on there. You won't be able to buy a Playboy or Hustler magazine in Ave Maria Town. We're going to control the cable television that comes in the area. There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town. If you go to the drugstore and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception, you won't be able to get that in Ave Maria Town."

Mr. Monaghan has since backed off such statements, saying now that the town will emphasize "traditional family values."

A law-school faculty member who asked not to be identified said the move would constitute a "de facto affiliation" with the university; even though the law school would remain independent, its location on the campus of Ave Maria University would ensure that most people would view it as part of that institution. Ave Maria University has been plagued by administrative turmoil and student-recruitment troubles in recent months, and is not yet accredited.

Some faculty members said they wished their benefactor had simply opened another law school in Florida and left them alone.

"Tom Monaghan thinks he owns our school and can move it like a pizza parlor to another state," one faculty member said. "They've shut us out of the decision making at every step of the way because they know there's no rational reason for it."

Says Mr. Dobranski: "We've done well here. We've thrived here. But I think we will thrive even more there. If there wasn't a financial benefit, I'd still be enthusiastic about moving because it will provide the law school with such a unique opportunity."