NORMA DAVIS SMITH, WIFE of Georgetown University Board member Frank Smith, harbors an odd illusion that critics of the Georgetown power plant should have been Georgetown residents exclusively (The Mail, 11/5). The inner circle of Georgetown University supporters has never understood that the dangers from the proposed power plant were perceived as hazardous for the entire city.

Surely the university deserves much of its past reputation for good deeds, but just as surely the university has diminished that reputation by its insistence on cheapening the value of life for the residents outside its campus’s borders. The university has relinquished its claim to innocence if ever it existed. The university’s attempts to cut opponents off at the knees by calling in congressional hatchet men over a three-year period finally propelled opponents toward their natural allies, those officials elected to represent the views of the electorate.

If Georgetown University had chosen to keep the proposed plant’s pollution and the reactivated power lines within its own confines, residents far removed from the campus area might never have joined together in a citywide struggle against the power plant. Then it surely would have been the Georgetown power plant in fact as well as in name.

Jack Everett, President, Glover Park Citizens Association, Glover Park