Medical School Refuses Plan To Defer Pre-Med Students

The Medical School will not make use of Local Draft Board Memorandum Number Seven to grant deferments to pre-medical students, Dean C. Sidney Burwell announced last night. Memorandum Seven permits medical schools to provisionally accept pre-medical students in their-first or second year of college and recommend them for deferment.

Applications for admission by students only mildly interested in entering the medical profession would probably swamp the medical school under such a plan, Burwell pointed out. Nor would the Committee on Admissions know enough about students in their early years of college to grant even conditional admissions, he added. Worst of all, Burwell said, the character of the profession may be harmed by men who enter it motivated primarily by a desire to avoid the draft.

Under the present entrance system, which will remain in effect, only these men who are ready to enter medical school next fall will be referred to the draft board as eligible for draft deferment under Memorandum Seven.

According to the Faculty of Medicine, whose vote determined the Medical School's policy, brief military service would not damage pre-medical students training severely.

"No Teeth"

Burwell assumed that the purpose of Memorandum Seven was to supply men for the medical corps of the armed services but noted that, "There are no teeth in the present law to put a man in the service after he graduates from medical school. What the Army and Navy will probably have to do is to finance medical training and set up binding agreements for service upon graduation just as they did during the war."