Star Tribune
What happened to St. Cloud State University?
Other missteps include big projects that didn’t pay off, including a high-end $30 million apartment building that had low occupancy and cost the university millions in subsidies before being sold.
The building opened in 2010 during the tenure of SCSU President Earl Potter III, who took on several large projects before he died in a car crash in 2016. Potter, who previously had been provost at Southern Oregon University, was one in a series of leaders who came to SCSU as an outsider, though that’s not atypical for regional universities.
“One of the failures of the system was importing your administration,” said Rep. Gene Pelowski, a longtime DFL legislator who chaired the House’s higher education committee last session. “It got to the point where [they] were literally stacking the administration with people who had not been in Minnesota.
“Administrators usually want some big project they can put on their résumé and once it was on there, they could leave,” he added. “Well, what about the campus?”
Pelowski, who also chaired the higher education committee a decade ago, blames legislators and the Minnesota State system for a lack of oversight on “campuses that were seeming to be in free fall.”
“The Legislature has been so addicted to introducing bills and hearing bills, it’s lost sight of its primary function — oversight on budgets,” Pelowski said.
Summer isn’t going to fade away.
The last week of the season will serve up a dose of heat and humidity, making it feel more like July than mid-September before the calendar officially turns to fall on Sunday.
Sunday’s high in the Twin Cities hit 88 degrees, and a streak of days with temperatures in the 80s is on tap for the rest of the week before a cool-down starts Saturday. By Sunday, when fall begins at 7:43 a.m., highs in the metro may not get out of the 60s, or 20 degrees cooler than Monday’s forecasted high of 88 degrees.
Despite dropping to slightly below-normal temperatures for a day or two next weekend, no major cold waves are on the horizon. The last half of September will likely remain warm, according to the Climate Prediction Center, which predicts temperatures will trend above normal.
The normal high for this time of the year is in the low 70s, the National Weather Service said.
October is also expected to get off to a warmer-than-normal start, according to the Climate Prediction Center.
Dry conditions will continue in the metro through Wednesday, with a chance of rain on Thursday and Friday. Just three-hundredths of an inch of rain has fallen in the metro since the start of September after a very wet start to summer. The lack of rain recently has led the U.S. Drought Monitor to classify the Arrowhead region of northeastern Minnesota and counties in southeastern and southwestern Minnesota as “Abnormally Dry.”
Copious rains this year should bode well for fall leaf viewing.
Star Tribune
Survivor who says she was sex trafficked at a Brooklyn Center Super 8 is now suing the hotel and its operators
The 15-year-old girl was given the illusion of safety and comfort but instead lived a life of horror for half a year in 2013.
A group of sex traffickers “kidnapped” the Minnesota girl, threatened her, advertised her body online and forced her to have sex for money at a suburban hotel, according to a group of attorneys now representing the survivor.
“After acquiescing to her traffickers demands under the constant threat of violence, she began to find herself forced to do increasingly depraved things, in increasingly depraved locations, such as the Brooklyn Center Super 8,” attorney Jeffrey Monpetit wrote in a federal civil complaint filed against managers of the hotel in which the girl, identified only as T.S., endured repeated torment.
First filed late last year, T.S.’s lawsuit is leaning on two federal laws that allow victims of sex trafficking to hold businesses civilly liable for facilitating their abuse. Now 26, T.S. is suing Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc., Sarah Hospitality, Inc., Wyndham Hotel Group, LLC and Super 8 Worldwide, Inc. — all entities with varying degrees of control and oversight of the Brooklyn Center Super 8 at which the alleged sex trafficking took place.
Erica MacDonald, a former U.S. Attorney for Minnesota who is now leading the legal team defending the hotel management group, wrote in a recent response to the lawsuit that the defendants “deny any liability for sex trafficking.” She previously cast doubt on T.S.’s lawsuit by saying it relied on news stories, online travel reviews and general information that was not enough to show that Wyndham interacted with the traffickers or should have known that T.S. was being trafficked at the hotel.
But T.S. won a key legal victory recently when Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz refused to dismiss the case, instead ruling that the survivor had “plausibly alleged” Wyndham and its franchisee, Sarah Hospitality, facilitated her traffickers and benefited from her harm.
“We are very pleased with Judge Schiltz’s ruling, we look forward to proceeding with discovery and the eventual trial of our client’s case,” Monpetit told the Star Tribune last week. “We are also happy for our client and what the ruling means moving forward for her and the many other victims of sex trafficking.”
The Star Tribune left a message seeking comment from Wyndham, as well as information about the company’s training and policies for identifying and stopping suspected sex trafficking.
A man fatally stabbed his wife of 65 years last week and told police, “I guess I lost my head,” according to murder charges.
Rodney Allen Andersen, 85, of Annandale, was charged in Wright County District Court with second-degree murder in connection with the attack in the couple’s home Thursday.
Andersen was arrested at the scene and remains jailed in lieu of $1 million bail. He’s due back in court on Thursday. Court records do not list an attorney for him.
According to the criminal complaint:
Andersen called Annandale police about 9:45 a.m., said he stabbed his wife, 83-year-old Janet Louise Andersen, and was unsure whether she was alive. Officers arrived to find him sitting on steps just inside the front door of the home on W. Knollwood Street.
Officers entered and saw a shaken Rodney Andersen still on the steps. His hands were on his head and looking down. The officers found his wife dead on the kitchen floor from stab wounds to her abdomen. A bloodied large kitchen knife was in the sink.
He told police that he and his wife had been married for 65 years. He said they were arguing that morning, as they often did, and “I guess I lost my head” before stabbing her.
