■V. S. Pritchett, British author, critic and foreign correspondent, will return to Smith College for his fourth appointment as writer-in-residence this fall. His name was among the new faculty appointments announced by college president Thomas C. Mendenhall.
■Seventeen students in Advanced Placement English in the class of 1972 at Northampton High School took the Advanced Placement Examination in May of this year and scores recently released by the Examination Board in Princeton, New Jersey, indicate that all members of the class passed with a score of honors or higher.
■Parents who attend the Northampton High School’s open house tomorrow will be able to take a virtual reality ride through the school as it will look several years from now. The designers of the renovation that is planned for the school later this decade have put together videos of the exterior and interior of the building as it will look after the work is done.
■Organizations that offer full-day kindergarten and two area charter schools may be the reason why enrollment in the Northampton schools sank by 24 students between April 1 last year and this past Wednesday. A total of 59 students are enrolled in two charter schools, and 35 are on waiting lists, Superintendent Bruce Willard said this week.
■Opening night events on Sept. 20, including fireworks, for the annual Belchertown Fair have been canceled due to the town’s high risk of Eastern equine encephalitis, but events for Sept. 21 through 23 will go on as scheduled.
■A break-in to the campus health center at Amherst College last weekend, during which two swastikas were painted inside the building, led to the arrest of a University of Massachusetts student police say is responsible. The young man had been observed in the bushes outside the Keefe Health Center building after setting off an intrusion alarm and he ran when spotted by police.