Amid warnings to the state about potential layoffs and other financial problems at the school, Oakland City University employees didn’t receive their pay on time Friday, a source confirmed to the Courier & Press. But a school official pledged workers will get paid once the university finishes “awaiting a bank transfer to complete our payroll obligations.”
“All employees will receive their pay, and the funds could arrive at any time,” B. Todd Mosby, OCU’s associate vice president for development, marketing and communications said via email Friday. “However, we do not yet have a confirmed timeline, as we are currently dependent on bank processing and transfer timing.”
That comes after the Courier & Press obtained an email to employees apparently sent by university president Ron Dempsey to staff and faculty on Thursday. In it, he says the school had “secured a revenue source for payroll last week,” but he goes on to unfold a complicated process that apparently delayed employees’ paychecks.
Dempsey stated that the source, which he didn’t name, wired a money transfer to U.S. Bank that could be then withdrawn by payroll service ADP and dispensed to employees.
However, there apparently was a mix up between the source and the bank, causing the funds to be held longer than usual. Dempsey initially believed funds would hit employees’ accounts by Friday. That hadn’t happened as of 1:50 p.m.
OCU’s WARN notice
The payroll problem is just the latest issue for the school.
The school sent a WARN notice to Indiana’s Department of Workforce Development on April 1 warning it would “conduct a mass layoff at the facility on June 1, 2026” affecting all 167 university employees. They cited “continued financial challenges.”
In a post to the school’s official Facebook page a day later, however, OCU officials denied there would be layoffs at all, despite the clear language of the WARN notice. Officials tried to hoist blame for the reports onto the media, saying coverage had “… incorrectly insinuated that we are going to be laying people off in June. We have no plans to do so at this time.”
The Facebook post also denied any rumors the school could close, calling the WARN notice “procedural in nature.”
Instead, they’ve turned their hopes to a patent the school owns for “carbon capture.” That’s the process of harnessing the carbon dioxide that would be emitted during the burning of fossil fuels and isolating it before it permeates the atmosphere.
You can find records for the patent on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website. Complete with dense explanations, formulas and line drawings, it’s a method and device invented by former OCU professor Barnabas Otoo that could reportedly achieve carbon capture in a more efficient and cheaper way.
OCU claims they’ve received a letter of intent from an unnamed investor group to purchase the rights to the technology. Officials haven’t said how much money they might get, only that they hoped to close the deal near the beginning of this month.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Oakland City University ‘awaiting bank transfer’ to pay employees
Reporting by Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
