■Northampton will have few steps to take to be in compliance with yesterday’s directive by the state Board of Education that students 14 years and older be allowed access to their school records. “We don’t anticipate too much change, really,” Northampton High School Principal John J. Feeney said today. He noted that Northampton has allowed high school students to look at their records for some time.
■Twenty-three of the 56 nuclear reactors in the United States, including the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant 40 miles north of Northampton at Vernon, Vt., were ordered shut down yesterday to inspect for possible cracks in emergency core cooling system (ECCS) pipes.
■A project to document the related histories of the women’s movement and lesbian community in the Valley over the last 30 years has received an $8,100 grant from the state. The documentary heritage grant from the Massachusetts Historical Records Advisory Board has been awarded to the Valley Women’s History Collaborative.
■A sure sign of the slow decommissioning of the Yankee Nuclear Atomic Co. is the declining number of workers. Another round of layoffs has cut 30 jobs at the Rowe plant. Those layoffs follow the 50 that occurred last month.
■The University of Massachusetts Amherst athletic department is looking for a new leader to guide it through an important time. The University of California-Santa Barbara announced Thursday that it has hired UMass athletic director John F. McCutcheon, 61, to fill the same post.
■Longtime anti-war activist Phyllis Rodin died Friday at the age of 100 at the Center for Extended Care in Amherst. The feisty feminist is remembered across the Valley for her political activism and the many lives she’s touched, according to her friend and caretaker Anne Griffin of Florence.