St. Aug’s struggles to secure Raleigh campus amid bankruptcy. How it plans to try
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- A break‑in at St. Augustine’s dorms left furniture thrown from windows over the weekend.
- Fencing will cost $10,000 and window boarding $4,000.
- The university asked to borrow $2 million more from Self Help Ventures Fund.
A group of people broke into empty dorms at St. Augustine’s University and threw furniture out of the windows over the weekend, according to the university’s lawyer, Ciara Rogers.
The crime comes after the 160-year-old historically Black university in Raleigh declared bankruptcy and announced it was losing accreditation in late April.
But the university can’t even afford to board up the broken windows without external financial assistance.
Rogers explained the problem to Judge David Warren at the university’s bankruptcy hearing Tuesday morning in Raleigh, asking him to allow St. Augustine’s to borrow $2 million more from its creditor, Self-Help Ventures Fund.
Security was a chief concern at the hearing. Rogers, Warren and bankruptcy administrator Brian Behr each expressed grave concerns that the campus may fall into disrepair. That would lower the value of one of the only valuable assets the university has — its land.
The school’s main campus is 105 acres near downtown Raleigh. No students currently reside on campus, and the school has fewer than five administrative staff working there during the day. A single security guard patrols in a golf cart at night.
Both Rogers and Behr called campus “an attractive nuisance.” People are more inclined to wreak havoc on campus now that it is teetering on the edge of abandonment, they said.
“We hear stories that the property is not secure, that people are breaking in and staying overnight and doing damage to the physical plant,” Warren said. “... Especially when nightfall comes, there’s a lot of folks out there who want to liberate some things for themselves.”
Additional security measures, like floodlights, could “send a message out to the public that you can’t come here and beat up on this university anymore,” Warren said. The interior, quad-style part of the campus is notably dark at night.
But St. Augustine’s says it can’t afford to beef up security, fix its fencing, board up windows, or install better lighting without more money from Self-Help. The fencing alone will cost $10,000, and the windows will cost $4,000 to properly board up. It also needs to make payroll, pay its financial aid and marketing contractors, and keep up with utility payments, among other continued expenses.
The school owes between $50 million and $100 million to hundreds of creditors.
Amid the extreme financial distress, it’s increasingly difficult for the university to pay staff on time. The school still has more than $46,000 in payroll expenses every two weeks. Joseph Lynn, secretary of the university’s Board of Trustees, said that a groundskeeper worked tending campus for three months without pay. But not everyone will be so loyal.
Self-Help has stepped in to help the university, taking on its debts, operating expenses, and now lending even more money to the bankrupt institution. The credit union’s mission is to “create and protect ownership and economic opportunity for all, especially people of color, women, rural residents, and low wealth families and communities,” even if that requires “financing capabilities beyond conventional lending standards [and] managing higher-risk business loans,” Self-Help’s attorney explained at the hearing.
St. Augustine’s was once home to the only hospital that served Black residents in Raleigh. Now, St. Agnes Hospital is a ruin.
“When I drive by, I see the St. Agnes ruins, and I’m like, ‘wow, that looks really cool,’” said Behr. “But it probably looks really cool to people who want to go in there and mess around, and it can be dangerous. Ensuring that [it] is fully fenced is really important to my office and to myself.”
The school is hoping to get its vehicles insured and registered so that security officers have something faster than a golf cart to ride around in. It also hopes to add a second security guard at night. The school has asked Raleigh’s police department to step up its presence in the area surrounding campus.
The president of the school’s young alumni association, Olivia Huckaby, told The News & Observer that she is worried about intruders and vandalism, and doesn’t feel that leadership has properly secured campus.
Warren approved the university borrowing an interim amount of $200,000 to cover immediate expenses through June, with another hearing scheduled for June 9.
Behr asked Rogers to keep him posted on any further break-ins, vandalism, or destruction.
This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 4:32 PM.
