Southwest State falls in line, changes nameThe Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees approved a name change for Southwest State University at its May 21 meeting.The new name of the Minnesota school will be Southwest Minnesota State University.Minnesota will be going back into the name, after it was removed in 1975, when it changed from Southwest Minnesota State College to Southwest State University.According to Southwest State president, David Danahar, the change will take effect July 1, 2003, with a one year phase-in.The phase-in will allow the name change to be made as economically as possible.In the past six years, enrollment at Southwest State has increased 56 percent to its current all time high of 5,414.The name change follows a movement among other state universities.In recent years, universities at Mankato and Moorhead have also adopted similar name changes.Construction begins on County Road 4The detour signs have been put in place for another round of road construction on County Road 4.This year County Road 4 (Luverne’s Main Street) will be redone from the Luverne city limits west to County Highway 11.County Highway 11, is commonly known as the "Steen Road."The length of the project is 3 miles and will cost $1.3 million.Access to Gold’n Plump will be maintained throughout the duration of the construction project.Construction activities will include the removal of the existing pavement, grading, placement of new drainage structures, placement of aggregate base, placement of bituminous pavement and seeding.The project is scheduled to be completed by August of 2003.The last time this section of County Road 4 was rehabilitated was in 1984.Connell breaks the 30 barrierIs it a record? No one knows for sure, but no one can remember anyone ever scoring 29, as Luverne Club Champion, Tim Connell did last Saturday.Playing in a five-some, Connell scored par on the par three #3 and again on the par 4 #5, with birdies on the remaining 7 holes.According to one of the witnesses, Dave Gangestad, two of the birdies were "long bombs," but the two pars that he had were short tap-ins.According to Connell, his lowest nine-hole score prior to Saturday’s performance was 32.Other witnesses in the group included Mark Sehr, Gary Kurtz and Tom Serie.Trying to control SPAMSPAM is getting out of control and Sen. Mark Dayton thinks something should be done about it.According to Dayton, 31 billion e-mail messages are transmitted through cyberspace each day.A friend of mine who owns a newspaper in Winona has hired a new employee to come in every morning to delete the SPAM from the in-box. It takes about an hour.Dayton’s solution is to create a national registry where people can opt to not receive SPAM and would make every e-mail’s source identifiable.Dayton’s bill would instruct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish a registry, similar to the national "Do Not Call" registry for telemarketing, in which a consumer could acknowledge that they do not want to receive SPAM.Entities that generate SPAM would be required to purchase the database from the Commission and would be prohibited from e-mailing registered customers.Publisher Roger Tollefson can be reached by e-mail at tolly@star-herald.com
