■Smith’s Vocational School students are constructing a house at the Chesterfield Scout Reservation. The three-bedroom structure will include a fully heated cellar workshop and upstairs office. The house is being built for the Great Trails Council, Boy Scouts of America.
■A meeting for the purpose of organizing an historical society in Easthampton was held Monday night at the Easthampton Community Center, with approximately 27 persons attending. After voting to create such a society, members appointed a structure committee to begin formulating plans for the organization.
■The Gazette’s Classified Advertising section is now available on GazetteNET, the newspaper’s electronic news and information service on the World Wide Web. Approximately 700 to 800 classified ads are put up on the Web site every day.
■The city Conservation Commission has ruled a practice football field behind Northampton High School is not functioning as a wetland – and need not be classified as one. The decision means that a “multi-sports facility,” including a new football field and track and a new parking lot for more than 200 cars, can be accommodated on the site as part of a renovation and expansion project.
■A physicist and provost at the University of Kentucky was named the 30th chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Monday. At a special meeting in Boston, the UMass board of trustees voted unanimously to offer the job to Kumble R. Subbaswamy, who said he would accept the position.
■A longtime advocate for land conservation east of the Connecticut River, the Kestrel Land Trust continues to expand its reach west into Northampton. The Amherst organization recently launched a Northampton committee founded by board members of the former Nonotuck Land Fund and is working on a deal with the city to hold conservation restrictions on 400-plus acres of city-owned land within major conservation areas.