Limestone University will close its campus at the end of the semester, college officials informed students and staff April 16.

Limestone spokesman K.C. Barnhill said the school will end in-person classes at the end of spring semester, affecting about 1,000 students. Also ending are Limestone athletics, but the school will continue to offer online classes and will continue as a charter school authorizer.

About 300 employees working at the university will lose their jobs, said Nathan Copeland, Limestone president.

He said the school is $30 million in debt and wouldn’t get an infusion of cash from tuition until September, making its continued operation unviable.

The announcement came at a pair of abruptly organized campuswide meetings after years of financial struggles, weighed down in part by a series of federal lawsuits over allegations a former employee secretly filmed visiting female student-athletes in the locker room, then posted the videos to porn websites.

While some lawsuits have been settled, one with nine plaintiffs is scheduled to go to trial in October.

Copeland told The Post and Courier that those lawsuits were just a small piece of the overall financial picture.

He attributed the unsustainable financial situation to the mix of students paying full tuition and those on heavy scholarship, as well as the previous administration dipping too much into the school’s endowment to balance budgets.

Copeland, who took the reins as university president last year, had plans that could have sustained the school, but there was not enough time, Charles Wyatt, vice president for communications, told The Post and Courier.

“We ran out of runway. … If we just could have made it until September,” Wyatt said.

If a white knight were to come forward with a $6 million donation, Wyatt said, the school could stay open.

Cameron Wells, a music major who transferred to Limestone from Coastal Carolina, was shocked to learn the campus would soon close.