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When the anchor institution of a town of 2,300 fails, that is not a private matter. Oakland City should not have to go through this quietly, and I do not intend to let it.
In May 2026 Oakland City University suspended every undergraduate program for the 2026-27 school year. The layoff notice filed with the state in April 2026 listed 167 jobs, more than a hundred employees reported going unpaid that spring, and students scrambled for transfer offers from USI, Evansville, and Ivy Tech. For this town the university is not a line item. It is the anchor.
I do not have a magic fix for a private university's finances, and I will not pretend to. Here is what a state senator can do: make sure displaced workers get every state resource they are owed, make sure students' credits transfer cleanly, and ask publicly what Indiana owes small towns when their anchor institution fails.
East Gibson schools project losing more than $400,000 over three years under the state's 2025 property tax law, and the superintendent has said out loud that outsourcing custodians is on the table. A town absorbing the loss of its university cannot also quietly absorb the defunding of its schools. Relief that shows up as fewer people looking after your kids' building is not relief.
What happens to the institution and its campus matters to every block of this town, and the town deserves a seat at that table. If you worked there, studied there, or run a business that depends on it, tell me what outcome Oakland City actually needs, and what the state could do that would genuinely help rather than decorate a press release.
Toyota's Princeton expansion began hiring in early 2026, within commuting distance of Oakland City. That helps, and it is not a plan by itself. Displaced workers need the state's workforce resources to actually reach them, and the roads and childcare that make a commute workable are exactly the kind of unglamorous follow-through I will keep asking about.
What am I missing?
Laid-off staff, students mid-degree, business owners on the square: tell me what the state could actually do that would matter here, and I will carry it to Indianapolis by name.
Page last updated July 18, 2026.
