This story has been updated.
Amid warnings to the state about potential layoffs and other financial problems at the school, Oakland City University employees didn’t receive their paychecks on time Friday, a source confirmed to the Courier & Press, and workers have reportedly been asked to attend a meeting next week to “discuss the future of the university.”
The C&P obtained an email university president Ron Dempsey sent to faculty and staff just after 4 p.m. Friday. It stated the meeting will take place Wednesday at 2 p.m. on campus. The Courier & Press has reached out to a school spokesman for comment.
Earlier Friday, 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 an email to the Courier & Press early Friday afternoon. “However, we do not yet have a confirmed timeline, as we are currently dependent on bank processing and transfer timing.”
That transfer apparently won’t come Friday. After this story initially published, the Courier & Press obtained another email from Dempsey stating the university would “not be able” to make direct deposits by the end of the week.
“I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” the email – which went out at 3:48 p.m. – stated. “On Monday we will be producing checks or making a direct deposit.”
The subsequent email calling for Wednesday’s meeting “to discuss the future of the university” arrived in employee inboxes exactly 30 minutes later.
All that came after the C&P obtained yet another email Dempsey sent to employees on Thursday. In it, he said the school had “secured a revenue source for payroll last week,” but went on to unfold a complicated process that allegedly delayed employees’ paychecks.
Dempsey stated that the “source,” which he didn’t name, wired a money transfer to U.S. Bank that could then be withdrawn by payroll service ADP and dispensed to employees.
However, he claimed there was a mix up between the source and the bank, causing the bank to hold the funds longer than usual. Dempsey initially believed money would hit employees’ accounts by Friday, he stated in the email. That didn’t happen.
OCU’s WARN notice
Uncertainty has rocked the school for several weeks now, but all along OCU officials have remained defiant, denying rumors the school may close and even casting doubt on statements OCU itself wrote in state documents.
On April 1, OCU sent a WARN notice to Indiana’s Department of Workforce Development warning it would “conduct a mass layoff at the facility on June 1, 2026” affecting all 167 university employees. It cited “continued financial challenges.”
A day later, though, school officials made a post to the university’s Facebook page denying there would be layoffs at all, despite what the school itself penned in the WARN notice. Officials blamed the media for “… incorrectly insinuat(ing) that we are going to be laying people off in June.”
“We have no plans to do so at this time,” the post stated.
It also denied any rumors the school could close and minimized the WARN notice, calling it “procedural in nature.”
The same post said OCU had turned its hopes to a patent the school owns for a streamlined method of “carbon capture”: the process of harnessing the carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted during the burning of fossil fuels and isolating it before it permeates the atmosphere.
Records for the patent are stored on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website. Complete with dense explanations, formulas and line drawings, it explains 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 a investor group to purchase the rights to the technology. They haven’t identified the investor group or said how much money they might get. They hoped to close the deal “by the first part of May.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Oakland City University workers miss paychecks; meeting set next week
Reporting by Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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