Harvard Resister Gets Five Years

It was short and bitter for Stephen H. Elliott '71. A one day trial in Concord last week. A plea of guilty. And a sentence the next day of five years in a Federal prison.

Elliott handed in his draft card at the October 16 Arlington Street Church Resistance Service. In January the freshman from St. Johnsbury, Vermont received a 1-A classification. Early April brought Elliott an induction notice.

A month later he quietly refused induction at the Manchester, N. H. Induction Center. "On June 12 a Federal marshal walked up to our door," as his mother remembers, "and arrested Steve." Elliott is now in the Allentown Federal Prison Camp in Pennsylvania.

Elliott, a worker for the New England Resistance, now boasts the longest prison term of the three N. E. Resistance members who have been convicted.

He probably could have put off his term a year or so with appeals, but whether out of ignorance or bravery he took all that the law gave him without appeal. The Resistance didn't advise him after he was arrested because "we do most of our work around Boston; Elliott was being tried in New Hampshire," a Resistance spokesman pointed out yesterday.

"I'm sure there was some technical bologna we could have appealed the case on," Steven Taylor, the Resistance spokesman said yesterday, "but he was alone up in New Hampshire."

Elliott was captain of the chess team and a classics major, not the average pastimes of most Federal prison inmates. But, according to the Resistance, Camp Allenwood is the "best" the Federal Government has got to offer, and the judge pointed out at his sentencing that he could be paroled after one year.