Hundreds of students and dozens of staff members say they were blindsided when a university in San Marcos suddenly shut down. The University of Saint Katherine sent out an email Thursday saying it would cease operations immediately.
The women’s beach volleyball team is competing in a national championship in Tennessee and doesn’t have a school to come back to.
At least 95% of the student body are athletes. They got the news just after 4 p.m. Thursday.
“I was working out and, you know, I saw an email on my phone,” senior Edward Vasquez said.
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Junior Annie Nugent said she was celebrating her grandma's birthday when she got the email from Frank Papatheofanis, the university president, stating that “the University of Saint Katherine will cease operating as of April 25, 2024” and that “finals week and any further instruction and athletics activity are canceled effective immediately.”
Head indoor women’s volleyball coach, Eryn Leja, said every single person associated with USK found out about the closure at the same time. She said this notice blindsided everyone, especially after the celebratory tone of the notice the school president sent just last month.
“Everyone got an email directly from him, stating that we're in just such a great position and congratulating all the accolades, all the coaches of the year, all of our teams making national tournament appearances, how enrollment is up,” Leja said.
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Staff had to pick up their last checks by noon on Friday. Graduation is still slotted to happen May 18 for students who have enough credits. Those who don’t will have to work with the credits they have and hope those can transfer out.
Their biggest question is why did Papatheofanis give such short notice? NBC 7 reached out to him, who said the following:
“We were forced to terminate employees because we didn't have sufficient funds available to pay them. We had recent unexpected expenses that depleted our reserves. Asking them to continue work activities knowing we did not have those resources is fraud.”
He later clarified the “unexpected expenses” were the athletics programs being significantly over budget.
USK opened 13 years ago. In the past four years, employees sued the university at least five times for breach of contract/employment.
