As Old Dominion University tries to reinvent itself, and move on from the fatal shooting of an ROTC instructor, the university’s relationship with much of its faculty has collapsed.
What began as professors’ worries over a deviation from a traditional college’s instructional format has snowballed into a belief that the university’s top leadership has no interest in addressing the piling concerns of its classroom educators or retaining those who oppose the changes.
Several faculty members described the university as operating under a “culture of fear.” At its very worst, the professors said, many have been fired or have resigned because they are not “sufficiently enthusiastic” about the transformation the college is undertaking.
The angst and distrust deepened after the March attack. Select members of the faculty assert the university appears to be driven by maintaining its image rather than taking accountability for safety concerns they said predate the Constant Hall shooting. Instead of engaging with the issues they’ve highlighted, the professors said, campus leadership has made a habit of communications that were petty and adversarial.
Brian O. Hemphill, ODU’s president, has a rebuttal — the university had to change, and quickly, or become irrelevant. He dismissed notions there hasn’t been a cooperative relationship between administration and faculty.
Years ago, the university was losing students and funding was drying up. If that steady decline in enrollment had continued, he said, the university now would be facing reduced budgets, slashed programs and fewer employees.
A program Hemphill said the university spent years developing seeks to address those issues by implementing 8-week, asynchronous, online courses at scale. The initiative is called the Forward-Focused Digital Transformation; it grows upon the existing online ODUGlobal infrastructure. There are nearly 900 of these, often general education, 8-week courses available this fall. Over 500 instructors participated in preparing the rollout.
Enrollment is up — about 24,000 students, more than 7,000 of whom take only online classes, according to the university. Thousands more are enrolled in both online and in-person classes. Student numbers were still increasing as of early October.
The plan has been divisive from the start, Hemphill acknowledged. He knew the initiative would face some faculty dissent.
“Am I going to lead and be courageous?” asked Hemphill. “Or am I not going to do what’s in the best interest of this campus and this community — even though it’s unpopular?”
Professors’ concerns started piling up in 2024. Some faculty said they were coerced into implementing a system they did not believe in, when they should’ve had a say in the matter. Critics of the Forward-Focused Digital Transformation viewed it as a stark departure from the traditional, in-person learning model that dominated the campus since its inception. They said the initiative was watering down students’ educations.
There is no singular view held by the faculty. Many accepted and seconded the administration’s worries of an apparent enrollment cliff that threatened continued operations. Under the principles of shared governance, however, the body of faculty should’ve held the lion’s share of influence on matters of curriculum and courses.
Early this year, the faculty discovered the administration had planned to implement the Forward-Focused Digital Transformation. Their concerns over cramming 16-week in-person courses into an 8-week, online, asynchronous model had been ignored, they said.
“What we’re looking at is a very top-down leadership structure that doesn’t take into account the expertise and longevity of faculty, which really are the core of the university,” said Corrin Allen, a professor for the school of speech-language pathology and chair of ODU’s 56-member faculty senate. “There was not only no faculty input, it was in direct contradiction to the will of the faculty.”
Meetings with university administration aimed at amending or delaying the rollout went nowhere, Allen said. Pilots of the new courses advanced.
The faculty senate took drastic action March 10. The body passed a 41-7 vote of no confidence against three of the university’s top leaders, including Hemphill. Allen said the moment reflected how poor the relationship between faculty and administration had become. The university’s Board of Visitors quickly responded. It would not allow the president, provost and the vice president of enrollment, transformation and technology to be removed.
Soon after, on the morning of March 12, everything changed. A 36-year-old gunman, an enrolled student, shot and killed ROTC instructor Lt. Col. Brandon Shah. Two cadets were hospitalized.
Boiling point to melting point
Staff, faculty, students, administration and a consulting firm seemed to agree the immediate response to the shooting was handled in an exemplary fashion. Professors who work in Constant Hall lauded ODU’s Chief of Police, Garrett Shelton, for his force’s actions March 12 and his subsequent attention to their concerns in the following weeks.
That attention was not shared by the administration, the professors said. The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press conducted over 50 interviews with faculty members, administrators, students, staff and former university employees over seven months.
Tensions resumed when the faculty senate inquired to university leadership about prior safety concerns. The senate had recirculated a 2024 complaint addressed to Hemphill that described safety concerns in Constant Hall, which has 19 standard and two lecture hall classrooms. The message was from Paige O’Shaughnessy, a lecturer for the School of Accountancy. The Pilot and Daily Press obtained and reviewed the records.
The complaint described a female student who had been assaulted in a restroom. It questioned the university’s security protocol and response, and asserted that not enough had been done help the student feel safe.
Further, the complaint described an issue with Constant Hall’s door locks.
“I realized that the two classrooms I teach in in Constant Hall leave me vulnerable in the event of a mass shooting or an incident that require immediate lockdown,” O’Shaughnessy wrote. “The one classroom has two doors that can only be locked or unlocked from the outside and the doors swing closed.
“I realized if we were in an active shooter situation or any situation that required lockdown, I would not be able to lock my classroom to protect my students.”
Hemphill’s assistant connected O’Shaughnessy to Shelton. She remembers the chief saying options for door security were limited, given the city’s fire code. An active shooter and threat training session was completed for Constant Hall personnel months later. But according to O’Shaughnessy and members of the faculty senate, the concern for the doors ultimately went unaddressed.
ODU is an open campus, meaning most of its buildings and grounds are publicly accessible.
An email signed by the faculty senate and addressed to the university’s Board of Visitors included this complaint. The letter read, “the shooting reflects yet another instance of the pattern of irresponsible mismanagement of university operations and disregard for faculty concerns that forced the faculty senate to pass a vote of no confidence in the first place.”
The response, authored by Rector P. Murry Pitts, was shared with the public.
“The faculty senate went on to claim that mismanagement of the university led to the March 12, 2026 terror attack. As I shared in my direct response to the faculty senate … such a claim is inaccurate and insensitive — not to mention disgraceful,” he wrote in the March 26 letter.
Pitts noted the quick response of the president’s administrative staff in answering the 2024 concern. His said the university would soon carry out an independent review, addressing requests by the faculty for the formation of a review committee.
“For the faculty senate to conflate a targeted act of terrorism with a vote of no confidence is not only a factual reach, but it also diminishes the significance of the tragedy. I want to be clear that exploiting a tragedy to advance a pre-existing political or personal agenda is beneath the professional standards of this institution,” Pitts said.
The rector’s letter directly linked to O’Shaughnessy’s original complaint, though it did not identify her by name; the lecturer said it had effectively identified her in another way.
When she filed the complaint, O’Shaughnessy included in the copy that her husband, Tim, had been murdered over two decades earlier. She said in her letter that she “wasn’t looking for sympathy,” but asked the administration “to appreciate why these issues matter so much,” she wrote in the safety complaint.
“I have an idea on what they’re planning on doing. Nothing,” she said of the university addressing security concerns. “If they do something, it implies something was wrong.”
It is unlikely that door locks would’ve prevented or changed the outcome of the March 12 shooting, O’Shaughnessy said in an interview. But she and a number of other faculty members point to Pitts’ letter as clear evidence that the administration and board are not interested in earnestly engaging with its educators.
Pitts declined several requests for an interview. A university spokesperson deferred inquiries to his past communications, which were said to adequately illustrate the board’s position.
‘The half truth is a whole lie’
Nearly two weeks before the shooting, Matt Frauenzimmer sent an email to university administration. At the time, he was the commanding officer of the Hampton Roads naval ROTC consortia, and Shah’s immediate supervisor.
Frauenzimmer, who had been a professor of naval science, was asking the university to devote more resources to security for ROTC students. He said Shah knew about and supported the request.
“We spoke with one voice,” Frauenzimmer told the Pilot and Daily Press. “Brandon and I would talk first to make sure we were on the same sheet. And whether he talked or I talked, we were talking for each other.”
Frauenzimmer said he was under orders for military personnel to maintain a low profile, such as altering meeting locations and not dressing in uniform. Those orders came when military buildup and involvement in Iran was escalating in early March.
A meeting never happened. Frauenzimmer said he wasn’t necessarily told no but he certainly didn’t get a yes about security. The only change he said he observed was a police car appearing near an entrance of some ROTC buildings.
Frauenzimmer said he was not interviewed for the independent report on the shooting compiled by the Cooley law firm — nor to his knowledge were other members of his command. He never met with Hemphill in the aftermath of the attack, despite having meetings with other universities’ presidents, military commanders, elected officials, law enforcement leaders and members of the community. He retired in July.
Nothing related to his prior concerns appeared in the Cooley report.
“The half truth is a whole lie,” Frauenzimmer said.
Hemphill said the retired officer was extended the opportunity for a meeting, but was unavailable at the time suggested. ODU’s president added he appreciated Frauenzimmer’s service and that he led the program with distinction. Frauenzimmer said he’d already planned a three-week trip at the time Hemphill suggested. He tried calling the president and even rearranged a job interview to find the time for a meeting, but it never happened.
As late as March 9, Frauenzimmer renewed his security concerns after his personnel spotted and reported suspicious activity outside an ROTC building.
“Whether those measures would have prevented the attack is unknowable. I do not claim otherwise, nor would I want such a claim made on my behalf,” Frauenzimmer wrote in a July 29 message to Hemphill. “What concerns me is something different.
“A documented request for enhanced force-protection measures, made before the attack, followed by a reported surveillance incident and renewed only days before the tragedy, never became part of the investigative record. A lessons-learned process cannot evaluate information it never examines.”
He said he is still open to a dialogue with university leaders.
“This needs to outlive the president,” he said. “It needs to be something that endures, that outlives us. We need to learn a lesson that’s not just material — that’s cultural.”
A transformational leader
If given the chance, Hemphill said, he wouldn’t change anything.
Obviously, he said, there are small, select areas of improvement. But he has no regret toward the speed or the nature of the transformation his administration has orchestrated. His job, he said, is to position the university for the future of higher education, not preserve what was.
That is to say he was not upset when he returned to work the day after the no confidence vote.
“It is not a badge of honor by any stretch of imagination,” Hemphill said. “But if I have to take a vote of no confidence to save people’s jobs, their careers, their lives — in terms of livelihoods — for the betterment of the future of this particular campus, I take that vote.”
The move to 8-week courses was designed to mirror the standardized, online and asynchronous formats of online courses common at other colleges, Hemphill said.
“A number of these programs, we’ve been doing asynchronous accelerator for over a decade,” said Nina Rodriguez Gonser, ODU’s vice president of enrollment, transformation and technology. She had been named in the vote of no confidence.
Hemphill has on several occasions said he believes the contingent of faculty distressed by university administration to be a vocal minority. He said at a university of about 1,500 instructors, this group “does not represent this entire campus.” The faculty senate wasn’t necessarily a representative body for all the campus’ faculty, he suggested.
Members of the faculty senate’s executive committee estimate the number of anti-administration educators to be about half to two-thirds of the university. The body has conducted polls to support this conclusion. They said many non-tenured faculty and staff are nervous to oppose the administration despite holding strong feelings about it.
Kate Hawkins, now a professor of communication and a member of the faculty senate, was a vice provost during Hemphill’s tenure. After developing disagreements with the direction of the president’s cabinet, she stepped down from the administrative position. She said these disagreements mirrored her experience at a previous job — as a dean at Radford, where Hemphill was president before coming to ODU.
“I could not be part of a system where people disappeared — being pressured in silence,” she said.
“I’ve been under transformational leaders, but they’ve treated people with respect. Brian Hemphill is a transformational leader, but he is not somebody who communicates effectively, that really cares what happens to his people.”
Citing a letter from Pitts, she said faculty members have been effectively told that they can leave if they don’t agree with the university’s direction.
“Old Dominion University will continue to move forward, guided by its mission and its responsibility to students,” reads a March 25 email to the faculty senate signed by Pitts. “That work requires true professionalism and good faith engagement. Individuals who are unwilling to operate within these expectations should reflect on whether this institution remains the appropriate academic and professional home for them.”
ODU’s future
In his ODU tenure of 40-plus years, David Burdige, a professor for the Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences, said the current tension on campus is unparalleled.
A previous chair of the faculty senate, Burdige said past university presidents had made efforts to meet with the senate’s executive members. During Hemphill’s term, the number of meetings with senate chiefs has dwindled from a monthly basis to a couple times a year. Those past administrations weren’t without discord, he added, but there was an unspoken understanding that one group needed the other to work properly.
“The faculty really wanted to work with the president,” he said. “To see if we could figure out some way to sort of address this problem, address these issues in a way that was acceptable to both sides. Increasingly, we were told, and the rector said it bluntly, ‘it’s my way or the highway.’ ”
The underlying issues recognized by ODU’s educators are no longer based on the nature of the concerns and complaints themselves, but by how the issues have been repeatedly ignored, the professors said. They said right now there is an apparent lack of trust — and has been for months.
To Hemphill, the rift between faculty and university leaders will heal through more conversations which will lead to further understanding.
“There are certain administrative components of the work in which we have responsibilities to make decisions for,” Hemphill said. “We’re going to continue to honor shared governance, but also, ultimately, decisions will have to be made.”
John Buzbee, 757-879-7421, john.buzbee@virginiamedia.com
