The first consideration is the power plant's neighbors, the 17,000 residents in Mission Hill who may have to live every day with the possible hazards resulting from the planned power plant. Many residents are deeply dissatisfied with the proposal. Because of this dissatisfaction it is necessary to examine alternatives to the plant itself, even at the risk of stopping the plant altogether.

A recently released environmental impact statement on the plant says that the planned location for the plant is the only practical location and that despite potential smoke fumes, loud noise and heavy construction, the plant will cause only minimal damage to the environment.

The impact statement is not an adequate or accurate study of the plant and its potential environmental dangers. The Boston Redevelopment Authority which has final say on whether the plant be built should commission another study, this time with a more thorough examination of plant alternatives and proper Mission Hill community input. If this input, easily obtained by talking to the Mission Hill Planning Commission, which represents the whole region, had previously been utilized, the environmental study may have reached a different conclusion regarding the plant's feasibility.

If there are viable alternatives, and if the majority of Mission Hill residents are against the plant, then it must be built elsewhere or not at all.

Save the Archives

THE UNIVERSITY is making its last bid to keep the John F. Kennedy Library archives in Cambridge by offering land near the Business School for the Kennedy museum. The proposal is a good one and should be embraced by the library corporation and various community groups that did not want the whole complex in the MBTA subway yards across the street from Eliot House.

Not only is the proposal feasible--a museum right off the turnpike with adequate access and potentially ample parking should be attractive to the library corporation--but Harvard finally appears to be proceeding in the correct manner to convince community leaders to support the Allston site.

The people in the government and community affairs office have taken an aggressive and open attitude that has always been needed to win the support of Cambridge's diversified communities. By meeting with local leaders and explaining the plan as well as possible, and hiring out consultants to answer community questions about traffic and crowd spillovers, the University has squarely put the onus of keeping the archives on the community groups, most of which said formerly that they wanted the archives to come to Cambridge.

A community leader from the Riverside-Cambridgeport area was right when he said last week that if Harvard had been this open in discussions from the beginning there would not be the animosity that now exists between Harvard and Cambridge over the Kennedy Library.

The Kennedy Library Corporation should accept Harvard's admittedly last-minute, but workable proposal to split the archives and the museum.

Harvard should not, however, be willing to give unlimited amounts of money to the Kennedy Library Corporation to meet its demands for financing if the site is in Cambridge. Instead it should weigh the value of the archives against the other priorities of running an educational institution and establish a reasonable limit to the money it is willing to pay for the presence in Cambridge of the Kennedy archives.

DuBois Institute

THE W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American research offers one of the few hopes for easing the myriad problems the University has with the hiring and recruitment of black people and the teaching of Afro-American Studies. If set up properly, the institute will attract top-quality black graduate students and professors, alleviating a shortage at Harvard that is now shameful. It will establish Harvard as a leader in the field of Afro-American Studies and strengthen the Afro-American Studies Department with an excellent research facility.

The Institute's considerable promise, however, should not be kept from some of the people who might benefit from it. The Institute should include undergraduates in its programs and in its planning, and should be tied to the local black community as well--ties that would not adversely affect the quality of the scholarship there. The DuBois Institute Student Coalition's goals of gaining roles for undergraduates and the community in the institute are admirable ones.

The Mass. Hall sit-in conducted by the members of DISC last April underscored Advisory Committee Chairman Andrew F. Brimmer's complete denial of their proposals' legitimacy, and, when Brimmer would not relent, Bok's failure to openly address the issues Brimmer especially, should not have excluded DISC so off-handedly. But now that it has rightly begun to recognize DISC, the DuBois advisory board should continue to listen to the groups' ideas and incorporate them into its conception of the Institute.