OAKLAND CITY — Frustration and financial desperation have boiled over at Oakland City University (OCU), where a group of employees announced initiating a class-action lawsuit against the institution after going more than a month without receiving their paychecks.
The legal action follows weeks of compounding financial emergencies at the private Christian university in Gibson County, which recently announced a total suspension of its undergraduate degree programs and a wave of imminent staff layoffs.
According to university faculty and staff, multiple consecutive pay periods have passed completely empty. Tensions spiked late last week when OCU President Dr. Ron Dempsey explicitly promised workers that their two missed paychecks would finally hit their bank accounts via direct deposit.
When the mandated Wednesday deadline passed with no funds transferred, Dr. Dempsey issued an update to the campus community, stating he had been “misled” by external entities regarding the immediate availability and transfer status of the funds.
University representatives have since indicated that the capital required to fulfill the backlogged payroll was reportedly secured through private donors, but administrative and processing delays have left the money gridlocked. To permanently clear the debt, university officials revealed that their final, emergency contingency plan involves liquidating the Deaconess building located on the campus grounds…