September 2024

Ridgewater College has joined more than 625 college presidents and chancellors across the nation in committing to encourage and support student voter registration and participation in elections at every level through the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.

Two elementary schoolaged boys were talking on the playground during recess one of the first days of the new school year.The first boy complained, “If I forget to say‘Thank you’to my mom for supper, my dad sends me to my room. If I don’t do my chores when I am supposed to do them, my dad sends me to my room. If I am mean to my little sister, my dad sends me to my room. If I bring home a bad report card from school, my dad sends me to my room. If I am sassy to my grandma, my dad sends me to my room. It seems like all my dad ever does is send me to my room!”

20 YEARS AGO: NEWS FROM THE ISSUE OF SEPT. 9, 2004 Nancy Piepenburg said she felt like she might get sick. Shirley Loch said the past few days had been filled with “lots of anxiety.” Meanwhile, riding a coach bus on Minnesota Highway 71 headed for Redwood Falls National Guard Armory where their mothers waited, Specialist Justin Piepenburg and Specialist Patrick Loch shared some of the same nervousness. But it was a good kind of nerves. After 11 months of preparation for and service in a security detail in Kosovo, 95 members of the 682nd Engineer Battalion — including 30 from CompanyA out of Litchfield — returned home Saturday. The 30 Litchfield Guard members were the first large-scale deployment from the local unit in 2003. They were attached to Company C and spent about five months training in the United States, then six months in Kosovo before returning to the States.

Orientation sessions, staggered schedules help students ease back into classroom School starts this week at Litchfield Public Schools. Under a schedule implemented several years ago, students ease into the classroom with open houses and orientation sessions designed to make them — and in the case of the youngest students, parents, too — feel more comfortable.

As students head back to the classroom at Lake Ripley Elementary School this week, they might be hearing their teacher in a whole new — better — way. And some of the teachers might be speaking with new clarity — and less strain — as well.