■Hungry students lined up for the annual University of Massachusetts chicken barbecue, which attracted a crowd of approximately 9,000 yesterday afternoon to the fields adjoining alumni stadium. Approximately 8,700 pounds of chicken were roasted and 2,000 pounds of cabbage cut to make the coleslaw to feed the large gathering.
■The Northampton School Committee has voted approval of the concept of “closed school days” at Bridge Street, D.A. Sullivan and Ryan Road schools, enabling students to remain in school during lunch instead of returning to their homes. The concept of closed school days was recommended by both the teachers and finance subcommittees.
■U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry came to the area Friday to pitch his re-election campaign to two key constituencies — gay and lesbian activists and organized labor. He said he is meeting with all “past, present, future and potential components” of the state’s Democratic coalition as he runs for a third six-year term in the Senate.
■Members of a local synagogue are seeking the right of first refusal to purchase a plot of nearby city land. The Congregation B’nai Israel is a neighbor to the city’s Water Department on Prospect Street, which the Department of Public Works says it may someday sell. Before that occurs, the synagogue wants an agreement that would allow it to match any offer.
■Sheila Bair, the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. who announced plans to leave her post in July, will not return to Amherst, even though she is still on leave from a faculty position at the University of Massachusetts. Bair held a teaching position at the Isenberg School of Management from 2002 to 2006.
■Hampshire College reached outside of the academic arena to select a new president Wednesday, with the board of trustees naming Jonathan Lash, 65, a Washington environmental activist, as the sixth person to lead the South Amherst campus.