Trouble in Corkscrew Swamp? Ave Maria Law School has lowest grades.

[madfloridian]

And I am reading that other parts of the city built by Domino's Tom Monaghan are having some problems as well. The city and law school were built in Florida's Corkscrew Swamp near Naples on Florida's west coast.

Here is more about how Ave Maria Law School went from being a top school to having the lowest grades among Florida law schools.

FIU First, Ave Maria Law School Dead Last in Florida Bar Exam Passage Rate

Here are the lists of the scores from the Florida Bar.

Here are the results, released by the Florida Supreme Court on Monday:

GENERAL FLORIDA BAR EXAMINATION

Florida International, 89.6% (120 of 134)

Florida, 89.1% (285 of 320)

Florida State, 88.3% (183 of 206)

Stetson, 87.7% (185 of 211

Nova Southeastern, 87.4% (201 of 230)

Miami, 82.6% (237 of 287)

St. Thomas, 77.9% (113 of 145)

Florida Coastal, 74.6% (179 of 240)

Barry, 70.3% (104 of 148)

FAMU, 65.3% (77 of 118)

Ave Maria, 47.8% (11 of 23)

Here is more about how it came about.

Ave Maria was once one of the best new law schools in the country. Founded in 1999, the Ann Arbor-based university was competing with local rival Michigan for the best bar exam results in the state, if not the country, before it was even fully accredited.

Then Monaghan, the school's conservative Catholic founder, decided to uproot Ave Maria to southwest Florida. Six years later, the law school is in shambles. According to Florida Board of Bar Examiners statistics released earlier this week, Ave Maria currently ranks dead last with an abysmal 47.8 percent passing the test.

"Tom thought the law school was so successful in Michigan, he could just pick it up and move it to Florida," says former Ave Maria law professor Charles Rice. "It was crazy. Absolutely crazy."

The government there has turned out to be unlike what a democracy should be.

From the Naples News:

Ave Maria - A Town Without a Vote: Now and forever

The article tells of a woman who moved there about 2007 with her sons.

What Delaney didn’t know is that Ave Maria’s founders already had decided how the town northeast of Naples would be ruled. They would have the power to control the town forever. This power, some say, is so great, it might be unconstitutional.

The founders, former Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan and local landowner and county namesake Barron Collier Cos., wrote and lobbied for a state law that established Ave Maria’s government. In June 2004, it became law over Ave Maria, the 11,000 acres of former farm fields that center on a university in the Catholic tradition.

But Monaghan’s team and Barron Collier Cos. crafted the law’s language to give them a substantial benefit.

What resulted was a government unlike any democracy residents such as Delaney had ever experienced.

Much more wrong than just the law school and the governance. This part is about halfway down in the article.

Fixing the mess in Ave Maria

These days, Ave Maria's new president and CEO is having to disavow a lot of his predecessor's accomplishments. Towey was hired in February, relegating Monaghan from CEO to the ceremonial position of chancellor. Formerly an aide to President George W. Bush and head of Florida's health and human services agency, he doesn't hide the fact that he's the clean-up guy sent to fix Ave Maria's mess.

..."But there might be no pulling up from Ave Maria University's nosedive. Its law school, which is still in Naples, remains in rapid decline. This summer, only 11 of 23 of its graduates passed the Florida Bar exam. At less than 48 percent, it was the worst result in the state and nearly 20 percentage points behind its closest competitor. The Ave Maria campus, meanwhile, continues to be plagued by high attrition. "If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have come here," one shy biology major says with a soft Southern twang. "Moving out here to the middle of nowhere was not the college experience I was looking for."

Towey might be reforming Ave Maria University, but there is little he can do for the town itself. There the real baron is Barron Collier Companies, argues Georgia Hiller. The pretty Republican Collier County commissioner suspects that the company — via its control of the Ave Maria Stewardship Community District — is siphoning money from other parts of the county. This summer she ordered the county clerk to audit the district, but the results aren't in yet. "I was concerned about the accuracy of their numbers," she says. "Ave Maria is supposed to be an independent, self-supporting district. We should not be subsidizing it.

And this part from The Town Without a Vote tells the problems that arise when things just happen without being planned and organized.

No one has tested this new form of government despite its substantial impact on the town’s residents and on large-scale development statewide. Ave Maria’s government, the focus of this series, has spawned six similar governments across the state. Their combined area is more than 100,000 acres, larger than the city of Philadelphia. These governments might not protect the public’s constitutional right to choose its leaders and determine how its money is spent.

Six similar governments in Florida with combined acreage of 100,000 acres. I call that one way to sell off the state without actually calling it that at all.

[MADem]

1. Fascinating stuff--+1 nt.

[madfloridian]

2. I am still trying to find the other 6 communities based on same model.

There seems to be no list on purpose.

[MADem]

5. It's a bit creepy, isn't it? NT

[LiberalFighter]

8. It appears to be Stewardship Community Districts

Here appears to be an explanation Community Development Districts and other locations including a Disney connected site.


Retirees moving to Florida should avoid these locations.

[madfloridian]

11. Ah, Celebration and St. Joe.....I am not surprised. Thanks for the link.

:hi:

[SteveM]

16. State of Florida has always allowed wide latitude in "sovereignty"...

That is, who gets it and who doesn't. Disney World was and is a virtual city-state with little of the normal state-local structures seen in other areas of the state. And that was in the mid-60s. The Colliers have been running that area of the state since frontier days. And did I forget (J.C.) Penney Farms? But even I am surprise this Citizen Kane Xanadu-on-the-cheap would be located here -- could be damned good hunting land, not some place to shield students from the "competition" of ideas.

There is an old saying about Florida, which sums up my home state, for better or worse:

If it ain't been tried, it'll be tried in Florida.

[KamaAina]

20. Actually those are garden-variety community development districts

as is The Villages.

I believe this is what you're looking for (it's a bit dated; there must be two new ones since '06):

http://www.hgslaw.com/assets/files/lawyer-pdf/cdd_primer_new.pdf

Q. What are some of the planned communities that have won legislative
approval for a stewardship district?

A. The first were Ave Maria and Big Cypress in Collier County, created by the Legislature in 2004. Others are the Lakewood Ranch Stewardship District (23,000 acres in Manatee and Sarasota counties), created in 2005; and the Viera Stewardship District (14,000 acres in Brevard County), created in 2006. All of them were granted the same basic powers as a CDD, but each has a unique turn-over requirement for transition to resident control based on that project’s specific build-out period.

In each case, the local legislative delegation agreed to sponsor the special act only after local county commissioners expressed their support following public hearings.

In addition, each of these special acts was drafted to contain unique provisions tailored to meet local political requirements and the developer’s needs. Strong local political support is an unwritten pre-requisite for creation of a stewardship district.

[KamaAina]

19. One appears to be right next to Ave Maria -- and twice as large.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2003/oct/29/ndn_collier_commissioners_ok_two_special_districts/

Barron Collier Cos. wants a special district to build and maintain community services for Ave Maria University and its companion town, while Collier Development Corp. wants a special district to control what would be called the Big Cypress Stewardship District for lands west of the proposed Ave Maria special district. Both proposed districts are east of Collier Boulevard and south of the Immokalee area.

The Big Cypress district is 21,700 acres. The Ave Maria district is about 10,000 acres.

Grandma and Grandpa retired to Naples, so I am somewhat familiar with the area. It is far out of the natural path of development along the I-75 corridor. I smell a classic Florida real estate bust in the making.

[Liberal_in_LA]

9. yep. +12

[beac]

3. So, there's trouble in Paradise?

HOLY SHIT-- literally, it seems.

Enjoy going down in history as the man who built the world's biggest folly, Mr. Monaghan.

Couldn't happen to a nicer wingnut.

[Warpy]

4. Or a better place: on a major hurricane track, buggy, muggy, swampy,

and best of all, sinking.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Monaghan and the developer guys kick off. The place has a chance of getting normal, then.

His pizza sucked, too.

[madfloridian]

6. Pastor of United Church of Christ...says Monaghan pushing Taliban type government.

http://chuckcurrie.blogs.com/chuck_currie/2006/03/ave_maria_domin.html

"Governor Jeb Bush attended the ground breaking for the project. According to the AP:

Gov. Jeb Bush ... lauded the development as a new kind of town where faith and freedom will merge to create a community of like-minded citizens. Bush, a convert to Catholicism, did not speak specifically to the proposed restrictions.

You can only imagine the other laws Monaghan has planned for his experiment.

The bottom-line: Monaghan's town is based on fundamentally un-American values. In Thomas Jefferson's America there is respect for pluralism and tolerance for differences. Monaghan and his supporters are acting more like the Taliban than the heroes who built this nation.

If Republicans like Bush are behind this effort it only reinforces a belief shared by many in this nation that the Republican Party has been hijacked by the Religious Right - a group of people opposed to basic ideals of democracy and bent on creating a theocracy here at home."

[HereSince1628]

7. Even I thought my fears of neofeudalism were a bit tin-foilly

but it seems like company towns are cropping up like orange groves. "Ave Maria’s government, the focus of this series, has spawned six similar governments across the state."

[madfloridian]

10. Jeb Bush authorized these communities.

Called them stewardship communities, I think. I can not find the others. I had found one, but now I can't.

http://m.naplesnews.com/news/2004/jul/30/ndn_special_community_districts_name_supervisors/

From 2004:

"It took less than 15 minutes each for Barron Collier Cos. and Collier Enterprises to appoint two boards of supervisors whose duties are to oversee infrastructure in the two special districts recently approved by Gov. Jeb Bush."

[sulphurdunn]

12. What it seems they've created

is a private corporation with the power to accrue public debt and to levy public taxes on a public denied representation to pay for it.

[SharonAnn]

13. The perfect example of enriching themselves at others' expense.

The name "Barron Collier" pretty well tells knowledgeable people that it's another Florida scam for transferring money from their pockets to the Barron Collier executives and owners.

Long history of doing that in Florida.

[Ikonoklast]

14. Taxation without representation, these guys don;t have a leg to stand on.

What a scam they got going there; raising money by selling munis, spending that money in any way they see fit without fear of having to put anything to a vote, and sticking the citizens with the corporate bills.

[Festivito]

15. I imagine when it started students did not realize how ideologically deficient they might become.

Future students have a track record to consider before applying.

The best of the best and the still-motivated Michigan castoffs are no longer available.

Vanity, vanity, Mr. M.

[lib2DaBone]

17. This is the place where 7-11's are forbidden to sell Beer, Cigarettes or Playboy.

Also.. the gilrs Swim Team have to wear full bathing suits.. no two-piece.

A bastion of critical thinking and open opinion. (not)

[Dont call me Shirley]

18. Not surprising, his pizza is in the bottom position in terms of quality.

[chervilant]

21. OMG!

If I spent all that money going to law school at Ave Maria, I'd be FURIOUS over these stats!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

22. Andrew Shirvell, Ave Marie Graduate

Who? Oh, this guy:

Michigan assistant AG fired after targeting openly gay student leader

Andrew Shirvell vs. Chris Armstrong

Above the Law: Andrew Shirvell

[madfloridian]

23. Wow, what a nasty fellow. Found a video of him with Anderson Cooper

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/29/andrew-shirvell-assistant_n_743953.html

"Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell has taken up an unlikely target: the student assembly president at the University of Michigan.

On a blog he started called "Chris Armstrong Watch," Shirvell attacks what he says is Armstrong's "radical homosexual agenda," posts Photoshopped pictures of Armstrong with rainbow flags and swastikas and picks apart the student's Facebook page. Armstrong is the first openly gay student assembly president at the University of Michigan.

Shirvell says the blog is "nothing personal," though he has gone to Ann Arbor to protest outside of Armstrong's house and attend student assembly meetings, over which Armstrong presides."

How did he get to be asst AG? That's hard to believe.

He must be one that Rick Santorum referred to when he spoke at Ave Maria....he told them they were Warriers for God.

"As the guest speaker at Ave Maria University's fall convocation August 29, Sen. Rick Santorum described the sources of what he called a "spiritual war" currently engulfing America. He told faculty and students at the Catholic college in Naples, Fla. that corruption is all around us, from our academics and culture, to politics and government. Even our nation's religious heritage and material prosperity have been corrupted to undermine the values on which America was founded, and "exterior attacks from radical Islam" complete the assault. Observing the current political climate he said, "This is not a political war, it is not a cultural war; it's a spiritual war."

...Explaining what he calls a "spiritual war," Sen. Santorum said, "The Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on - a good, decent, powerful, influential country: the United States of America."

Among the institutions under spiritual attack, Sen. Santorum identified academia as the "first to fall." Our university students are being taught to "pursue no truths, or to deny the existence of truth," he said. Mr. Santorum said American has abandoned the Judeo-Christian ethic it was founded on. Consequently in his view a culture in which "poor behavior is made fashionable," has been Satan's subsequent success.

"Things are so bad and you are here," he said triumphantly. "God has chosen you to be here in a time when he needs soldiers the most; congratulations! ....The greatest thing is, signing up for His army is easy," he said, "but, the money's lousy, you'll be unpopular, you'll be ridiculed and you'll lose most if not every one of your battles."

Thanks for sharing. I can not believe he was asst AG

[mahatmakanejeeves]

24. "Thanks for sharing."

You are more than welcome. It is my pleasure. Keep up the good work.

[hifiguy]

25. How in the blue hell do these

bullshit jackleg "Xtian" law schools ever get accredited? The ABA used to have some standards. May as well "accredit" Joe's Law School, Bar and Grill - the graduates will be about as educated and useful in the legal profession. :grr::nuke: