University mourns Jay Brooks, 25

Jay Brooks, a second-year student in the Law School and alum of the College (A.B. ’10), passed away on Saturday after a battle with cancer. He was 25.

Brooks was an integral part of the Law School community and loved by his family and friends, Dean Michael Schill and Dean of Students Amy Gardner said in an e-mail sent to the Law School community. “Jay had a terrific sense of humor, which he maintained even after it was clear that the doctors’ prognosis was correct,” Schill and Gardner wrote in the e-mail.

Brooks, who originally hails from Oak Forest, Illinois, served as a tutor to students in the Chicago Public Schools as a part of the Law School’s Neighbors volunteer program and as a staff member of The University of Chicago Law Review. Neighbors President Brooke Anderson said in an e-mail that when the Law School asked Brooks at the the beginning of the school year how they could support him through his treatment, he asked the school to organize a day of service, during which 100 volunteers served at six organizations in Woodlawn and Hyde Park.

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