Oakland City University employees still haven’t been paid. And they’re tired of excuses.
Internal emails obtained by the Courier & Press show multiple faculty and staff members demanding answers to why they haven’t received a paycheck since the school missed the usual direct deposit on May 8 and then again on May 22.
Now scores of employees will forge ahead without jobs after the school announced mass layoffs for May 31 and at least a one-year end to OCU’s undergraduate programs.
On May 22, OCU President Ron Dempsey sent faculty and staff the latest in a series of updates on the pay situation. In each, he’s claimed an unnamed donor will fund the May 8 payroll. The only thing stopping that from happening, allegedly, were unexplained “banking issues” keeping the money from landing in school coffers.
This time Dempsey claimed $350,000 had “hit the funders’ account” and would go into OCU’s possession when banks reopened the day after Memorial Day. on May 26. He also expected an extra $1 million in “tranche money” to get to funders that same afternoon. It’s unclear if the “funders” were the same for each pile of money.
If that happened, Dempsey stated, OCU would be able to cover May 22 payroll as well. It didn’t. And as of Friday, employees still hadn’t been paid for either stretch.
That sparked multiple fed-up emails from workers. They questioned whether anything Dempsey told them had been true. Others wondered why, in 2026, bank transfers would take weeks to complete.
“I was mislead (sic) and that is on me,” Dempsey wrote in response. “As of now, the donors are still working to fund the May 8 and May 22 payrolls.”
He pledged that employees will eventually get paid – even if the money has to come from the sale of a Deaconess Clinic building the school owns on campus.
In a WARN notice OCU filed with Indiana’s Department of Workforce Development on April 1, the university stated it would lay off 167 employees by June 1. At the time, that number represented every worker at the school.
Some employees, however, have left on their own in the interceding weeks. On Thursday, the Courier & Press asked Todd Mosby, OCU’s associate vice president for development, marketing and communications, how many people next week’s layoff would affect now. He didn’t respond.
Earlier in the week, however, he denied a rumor that he, Dempsey and other administrators continued to get paid while faculty and staff went without.
“NO, neither President Dempsey, I, nor anyone received pay of any type,” he said via email.
OCU’s ‘strategic partnership’ that didn’t happen
The last few weeks have dragged OCU employees through a gauntlet of emotions.
The April 1 WARN notice put any job insecurity in black and white. “Financial challenges require us to reduce our workforce at this facility,” it read.
But the next day, in a post to the school’s Facebook page, OCU officials denied layoffs would take place at all. They said a patent the university owns touting improved methods for carbon capture had sparked interest from unnamed investor group. Selling it could keep the school afloat, and they expected the deal to go through around the start of May.
That didn’t happen. And on May 13, administrators gathered the school’s athletic staff for a 9 a.m. meeting where they said the school would close effective May 31.
Less than two hours later, at an 11 a.m. meeting with staff, things changed. Mosby told media outlets an undisclosed “strategic partner” would happen, infuse OCU with cash, and not only keep the place open, but allow it to expand its offerings.
Media were barred from attending the meeting. But according to an account newly obtained by the Courier & Press, Dempsey told staff that one of the partners was a Tri-State resident who grew up in Oakland City. They initially planned to invest a lump sum of money in a golf course, but after reading news accounts of OCU’s struggles, they decided to give the funds to the university instead.
Dempsey said the partners were “interested in … AI stuff” and had plans for artificial intelligence projects around Southern Indiana, including data centers. With the partnership, the school would be able to use any programs that came out of the AI work.
Some employees in attendance asked if the partners were legitimate and if OCU wanted to be associated with an AI company.
OCU said the partner would work with the board of trustees to reach a deal within 10 days. That never happened. And on May 19, when OCU said in a news release that it would end its undergraduate programs for at least a year and lay off its employees, the strategic partner was never mentioned.
Most of the questions during that May 13 meeting, however, centered around their missing paychecks. When an employee lamented a lack of transparency from administrators, Dempsey started yelling, saying he’d been as transparent as possible. At a different point, he said he could only rely the information given to him.
On Friday afternoon, Dempsey sent OCU employees another email. He just spoke with the unnamed donor, and that person planned to wire the funds for payroll on Monday. It would enough to cover the May 8, May 22 and even June 5 checks, he claimed.
If that didn’t work, the backup would be the sale of the Deaconess building.
“We have a signed purchase agreement approved by the trustees,” he wrote, “but we have a level of due diligence to be conducted before the finalization of that sale.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: OCU faculty fed up from lack of answers about their missing paychecks
Reporting by Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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