■Heading student council activities at Northampton High School this year will be Maureen Tobin, acting as secretary, Jon Roche, president, Mike Barrett, treasurer, and Rose Paul, vice president.
■Barbers’ Union, Local 134, representing barbers in Northampton, Easthampton and Greenfield, has voted to raise the price of a haircut from $2.25 to $2.50. A spokesman for the union said it had been at least five years since the last raise and that it is necessitated by increase costs and overhead.
■Mayor Mary L. Ford says the state is mishandling the Northampton State Hospital redevelopment project. Ford says the state Division of Capital Planning and Operations is failing to provide developers with information they need about the property, if they are to submit bids to lead or join the long-awaited effort.
■A proposal to ban alcohol from the campus of the University of Massachusetts and other state colleges and universities and colleges is headed to a vote tomorrow amid concern locally that such a move would only shift the burden of student drinking to the community.
■Excited, stressed, grateful — Michelle Brooks-Thompson of Sunderland is feeling all of those emotions as she competes on the NBC singing competition “The Voice.” Brooks-Thompson has moved on to the second phase of the competition — the Battle Rounds — which began this week and will run for two more weeks.
■Northampton’s first Reuse & Recycle Rally for the Arts will take place today at JFK Middle School. The free event will feature a gallery of works by 29 local artists made from used materials, workshops, a Halloween costume exchange, and a simultaneous Styrofoam recycling event to benefit the JFK PTO.