The education of Santa Ono: Can UC's president hold up under pressure?

He's not sleeping much.

A tired-looking Santa Ono admits this right away at the start of the interview. One of a string of interviews, actually: CNN, the Associated Press, The Enquirer, a local TV station.

The University of Cincinnati president is wearing his customary suit and bow tie. He's polite and warm. Friendly, but firm.

"This doesn't define us, but we must grow from this," he says. "And my responsibility as the president is to make sure that we lead from this moment to become better."

It's Thursday, the first day after a UC police officer is charged with murder for shooting a man in the head during a traffic stop. And this is new territory for Ono, the bow-tie wearing, constantly tweeting, always chipper fan of UC. This is hard stuff. Life and death stuff.

Ono spends much of the day in meetings. He meets with his trustees and top administrators in the morning, where they decide to hire, at whatever cost necessary, an external review of the university police department.

He meets with media in 15-minute increments. He's done interviews before, but these are different. Some are phone interviews. Some are in-person. Many are denied.

"We've focused on just a handful that we feel are important media platforms by which to communicate with people we care about," Ono says.

And then, ever the media master: "And that's one of the reasons we chose you."

Ono is UC's 28th president, taking the job in August 2012. He's a proven social media guru, with a Twitter following 54,000 strong. He's an eye-disease researcher; a Canadian native; UC's first Asian-American president; a Ph.D; a husband and a father of two; and, as mentioned, an expert in bow ties.

Do you always wear a bow tie?

"Always, always, always," he says. "I actually don't know how to tie a regular tie anymore."

Ono was on vacation on July 19, the day then-UC police officer Ray Tensing fired a fatal shot into Sam DuBose's head. The UC police department reports to a university vice president, so that VP got word first, and he called Ono about 30 minutes later.

"At that time, we didn't have much information, other than there was a shooting," Ono says. He thinks he knew it was fatal then, but he can't remember for sure.

Ono was visiting east coast colleges with his oldest daughter, who is interested in design. His family finished the trip, but Ono came home early.

"I'm sorry for my daughters, that I can't be with them," he says, "but that's part of being president. In a crisis situation, you have to be president."

On Twitter, Ono is the man. He joined in 2010, and he has 54.2K followers. He has tweeted 38.3K times, an average of roughly 25 a day.

On July 19, his account shows seven tweets. None is about the shooting. His last message for the day was posted at 8:53 p.m., according to Twitter, a little more than two hours after the incident: "Univ. of Cincinnati moves up 20 spots in 2015 Center for World University Rankings #HottestCollegeinAmerica".

It got 44 retweets and 97 favorites.

Ono's first mention of the shooting comes two days later, on July 21. It is, for him, a noticeably subdued tweet. No exclamation marks. No UC shout-outs or hashtags. A simple link preceded by: "Here is my statement on the officer-involved shooting on July 19th."

The next day, Ono tweets that UC will cooperate fully with the investigation. And that he talked with Mayor John Cranley about public safety.

"City and university collaboration is key, as it has always been," he writes.

It's been a calculated approach, Ono says, a new tack. For one, he didn't know much, so he didn't have much to tweet. And two, he was legally and ethically bound. There was an investigation under way, which changes the standard for what he can and can't say.

Plus, he's very, very busy of late. It's rather difficult to, say, tweet and talk to a reporter simultaneously, he says with a grin.

John Millen is a communications coach in Columbus, working often with companies and sometimes with college presidents on crisis management. Millen has never met Ono, but he reviewed the president's performance for The Enquirer. His overall grade? B.

Ono gets points for partnering with city and community leaders, but he gets dinged for waiting too long to address the situation initially – it should be minutes or hours, not days, Millen said. Ono is also fumbling on records requests by passing them off to general counsel rather than taking ownership, Millen said, and he had an awkward first press conference with Mayor Cranley. During that conference, Cranley spoke off the cuff, sounding genuine and sincere, Millen said. Ono said the right words, but he read them from a piece of paper.

"The president was clearly very nervous. ... It lacked the kind of resonance you want from something like that," Millen said. " 'I'm truly sorry.' People have to speak from their heart when they say that, not read it from a piece of paper."

Ono's counterparts across the city are watching, too. Dr. Odell Owens, who leads Cincinnati State, is impressed and motivated by Ono's leadership. No one would want to be in Ono's shoes right now, but the UC president is wearing them well, Owens said.

Owens watches his friend on TV, and he can see in his eyes that Ono is deeply troubled by what happened and truly committed to moving the university and city forward.

There are 17,000 employees on UC's campus, Owens said; "It's hard for you to be responsible for everyone's actions."

"I said to myself, 'Wow, if I'm ever in that situation, I hope I'll respond as well as President Ono has.'"

And Ono is improving as he goes, Millen said. The difference between his first press conference and later recordings is stark. The people who get in trouble are those who say, 'No comment,' Millen said. But Ono, classic Ono, is "arms wide open," and that will play in his favor.

"He's built up goodwill," Millen said. "There are people who don't have a bank of goodwill, and when a crisis hits, they try to find friends, and they don't have any. President Ono obviously has a very deep well of goodwill to draw on."

Ono says he didn't watch the video ahead of time, the body camera footage that shows Sam DuBose die. He saw it before the rest of the world, but not long.

"Until I saw it, just like everybody else, everything was based upon what other people said it showed: 'It's bad. It's bad,' " he says. "When I saw it, I agreed: It's bad."

On Wednesday, the day the indictment was announced, Ono shut down campus. Classes were canceled, kids at summer camp sent home. There were barricades and police cruisers and Ohio Highway Patrol troopers.

The closure was "an abundance of caution," according to UC officials, but there is a perception among some that it was overkill. Black Lives Cincy posted on Twitter that the "militarization" of campus was an attempt to induce panic and intimidate would-be protesters. Ono took rumored threats seriously, but maybe too seriously? And, maybe that was a mistake?

On Thursday, Ono is fatigued. And sad. But he's still very personable. He smiles often. It's a brief interview, but Ono is completely focused for the time allotted.

He also answers every question – sort of. Does he think campus officers should be armed?

Well, that will have to be a collaborative discussion with city police.

What about the UC officers who might have lied to support Tensing's story?

The university is investigating that right now. "We are very seriously investigating what happened that day."

Despite everything, Ono still manages to push a few UC positives. Somehow, even in this situation, he finds his way back to his comfort zone: bragging about his university. UC gave grant money to groups studying innovation in public safety, he says.

And that video? The one that shows that terrible traffic stop? That was only available because UC outfitted its officers with body cams in 2014 – something the city police department still hasn't done.

"I care so much for this university and this city, and I know that it's my time to lead," Ono says. "It's a privilege to be the president of the University of Cincinnati, and I'm going to give it everything I have."

Will this shooting scare students away?

"It's too early to say."