■Principal John J. Feeney has announced that Joanne Montgomery, a senior at Northampton High School, is the 1972 recipient of the Betty Allen Chapter of the DAR Good Citizen Award. Miss Montgomery will represent Northampton at the Massachusetts DAR Conference to be held in Boston in March.
■The draft lottery for 2 million men turning 19 this year began today with No. 29 being assigned to those born Sept. 26, 1953. The second draw mated No. 319 to men born Oct. 11, 1953. The lottery decides the sequence of the call to military service in 1973, at least until July 1 of the year when the current draft authority expires.
■A two-decade member of the Smith College faculty will become the college’s dean for academic development, starting July 1. Donald C. Baumer, a faculty member since 1977, will succeed Susan C. Bourque, who has held the post for three years.
■The Northampton Center for the Arts marked the beginning of Black History Month with a reggae concert Saturday night. Gregory Jones, a board member of the center, said they started showcasing black artists during Black History Month six years ago, as a way to make their contributions more widely known in Valley communities.
■A bit of Occupy Wall Street’s national flair came to Northampton Thursday afternoon when about 150 local and national movement members protested downtown against economic injustice. The march capped a two-day visit by members of the Occupy movement, who stopped in Northampton as part of a multi-city bus tour throughout the Northeast.
■Mental health advocates and law enforcement officials are endorsing a new study that recommends better training and better options for police in dealing with mentally ill people. A recent study, “Building Strong Alliances between Mental Health and the Criminal Justice System” claims that 42 percent of jail inmates in Massachusetts have been diagnosed with mental illness.