A group of citizens, including one Harvard professor, has written a letter to 2000 members of the local draft boards in the Boston area, asking the members to resign their positions on the boards.

Vern Countryman, professor of Law at Harvard, was among the 17 initial signers. Others include Noam Chomsky, an M.I.T. professor, and Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Harvey, who owns the Brattle and Harvard Square Theatres.

The letter represents the beginning of a campaign by the Boston Draft Resistance Group to publicize the operations of the draft boards. Along with the letter, BDRG released the names of all 200 members of draft boards in communities inside the area circumscribed by Rte. 128.

Two of the names on this list, according to a BDRG spokesman, are Harvard Square merchants: Charles Chaprales, of Waltham, owner of the University Restaurant; and Benjamin A. Jacobson, of Newton, owner of Gold Coast Valeteria.

In compiling the list of draft board members over a six-month period, BDRG claims it sometimes had "to threaten court action to find out the names..."

In the letter to the draft board members, the signers ask them to follow the lead of Roscoe N. Coburn, chairman of the Concord, N. H. board, who recently resigned after 20 years of service, saying we are "embroiled in an Oriental civil war in which both sides are against us economically and militarily... I want no further part in the conscription of our youth who, either willingly or unwillingly, will serve in the cesspool otherwise known as Vietnam."

'Hopelessly Entangled'

The letter also attacks the Selective Service system itself, calling it "so hopelessly entangled that none of the reforms now recommended will make it fair."

BDRG says it intends to make this list of board members available to neighborhood groups, in order that parents, clergymen, businessmen, professionals, and student registrants may put pressure on board members to resign.

The BDRG spokesman said the letters to the 200 draft board members had been mailed on Tuesday.