Massachusetts ? A former Harvard graduate student was sentenced to two years in prison Friday after he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for stabbing to death a teenager who made fun of him.

Alexander Pring-Wilson, 29, changed his plea as part of a deal with prosecutors that let him avoid a third trial in the death of 18-year-old Michael Colono.

The case attracted widespread media attention because of long-standing tensions between Ivy Leaguers and working-class Cambridge residents.

Pring-Wilson, the son of Colorado lawyers, was studying for his master’s degree in Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard. Colono, a high school dropout, had fathered a child at 15. He had earned his high school equivalency diploma and was working as a cook at a Boston hotel when he was killed.