By Kylie Marsh
Kylie.marsh@triangletribune.com
RALEIGH – Shaw University is grossly mismanaged, according to a group of alumni.
The Save Our Shaw Coalition, composed of concerned alumni, filed an official complaint with North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson late last month. The complaint, which is over 200 pages, calls for more transparency from university administration regarding real estate transactions, financial oversight and governance.
“All we want is answers,” Shaw alumnus Eugene Myrick said at a press conference. “If nothing is wrong, I’ll be the first person to call a press conference and stand up here and apologize.”
The coalition says the announcement of St. Augustine’s University’s bankruptcy has made the issue even more urgent.
In a news release, the coalition states that public tax filings and audits from the university report approximately $1.4 million in donor-restricted contributions intended to fund new or existing endowments were “used to support the university’s declining cash-flow position and satisfy other obligations,” without the knowledge of university leadership. The audit reported an outstanding balance of approximately $2.2 million in borrowings against the endowment as of June 30, 2025.
Shaw is in an area slated to become an entertainment district of downtown Raleigh, also a “social district” that allows the public to consume alcoholic beverages outside.
The university has also petitioned to rezone the land to a “business district” and listed 17 acres of real-estate property for sale; this, according to the coalition, also removed historic preservation status for many of the school’s buildings which were built 10 years post- Emancipation in 1875.
In May 2024, Shaw announced the selection of a firm to lead master planning for the proposed ShawU District, and said the process would be completed by late December 2024, with a final public-facing draft during the first quarter of 2025. While Shaw President Paulette Dillard presented renderings in a board meeting, a comprehensive master plan has yet to be publicly released.
“That insults the intelligence of everybody. The fact that we have board members who actually accepted that as a master plan, once again tells you that these people have to go,” Myrick said.
“The status quo is that we’ve had the same board members for more than 30 years, and that’s the problem. It’s somebody’s uncle, cousin, father that’s sitting on that board, and when we talk about them, ‘oh no, you’re airing dirty laundry.’ Well, when do we ever get to clean the laundry?”
Kesha Monk-Myrick, a coalition representative, said the press conference was “a last resort.”
“A lot of people like to refer to us as ‘disgruntled alumni,’ and that’s not the case. We just want to know, ‘Is this against? Is this in compliance with the law?’”
The full complaint can be found at: https://saveourshaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/REVISED-AG_FINAL-.pdf.
