Student Drops Suit Asking Med School To Award Diploma

A fourth-year medical student who filed suit Wednesday in the Middlesex Superior Court asking the court to order the University the grant his diploma at Commencement has voluntarily with drawn his request, the student's attorney said Friday.

The student. Barry H. Brooks, Saturday declined to comment on the case. The suit he filed contends that the University has withheld his degree for two years because Brooks made false statements on his Med School application in 1969, claiming that his parents were both dead.

Although Brooks admitted in the suit that both his parents are alive, he contended that because his father is an alcoholic and his mother a prostitute, he was "ashamed to put this on the application."

Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, said Friday that the case is

"extremely complex," but "the Medical School did not act hastily" in its decision to withhold the diploma. There is an "appropriate basis" for its decision, he said.

The case will be reviewed in April, and Brooks may receive his diploma next June, Steiner said.

Dr. Jack R. Ewait, associate dean for clinical affairs who has been handling the case for the Med School, Friday declined to say how the school discovered the discrepancy, because he said it is a "purely personal matter," but he said Saturday that the school is trying to find a job for Brooks in the medical area at Harvard for next year.

Brooks previously signed a contract for an internship at Highland Hospital in Rochester, but the hospital denied him the position when it learned he will not receive his diploma.

Ewalt said that it is not clear yet whether the hospital will accept Brooks when he does graduate