page_title: Draft evasion in the Vietnam War
section_title: Evasion counseling
hierarchical_section_title: Draft evasion in the Vietnam War / Evasion in Australia and the United States / Evasion counseling
caption_attribution_description: English: The photograph depicts a legion of police officers deploying at the 14th and Clay streets to greet the arrival of anti-draft demonstrators on a march from the University of California, Berkeley campus during Stop the Draft Week, Oct. 1967. Negative number in the Oakland History Room: F-2970.
context_page_description: Draft evasion in the Vietnam War was a common practice in Australia and the United States. Significant draft avoidance was taking place even before the U.S. became heavily involved in the Vietnam War. The large cohort of Baby Boomers allowed for a steep increase in the number of exemptions and deferments, especially for college and graduate students. According to peace studies scholar David Cortright, more than half of the 27 million men eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War were deferred, exempted, or disqualified.
context_section_description: Other young men sought to evade the draft by avoiding or resisting any military commitment.  In this they were bolstered by certain countercultural figures.  "Draft Dodger Rag", a 1965 song by Phil Ochs, circumvented laws against counseling evasion by employing satire to provide a how-to list of available deferments: ruptured spleen, poor eyesight, flat feet, asthma, and many more.  Folksinger Arlo Guthrie lampooned the paradox of seeking a deferment by acting crazy in his song "Alice's Restaurant": "I said, 'I wanna kill! Kill! Eat dead burnt bodies!' and the Sergeant said, 'You're our boy'!" The book 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft was co-authored by Tuli Kupferberg, a member of the band The Fugs. It espoused such methods as arriving at the draft board in diapers.  Another text pertinent to draft-age men was Jules Feiffer's cartoon novella from the 1950s, Munro, later a short film, in which a four-year-old boy is drafted by mistake.
  Draft counseling groups were another source of support for potential draft evaders.  Many such groups were active during the war.  Some were connected to national groups, such as the American Friends Service Committee and Students for a Democratic Society; others were ad hoc campus or community groups.  Many specially trained individuals worked as counselors for such groups.
caption: David Harris and "The Resistance" helped organize Stop the Draft Week in Oakland, California, October 1967.[17][18]
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