Well I gave my personal anecdote. There was a girl in our HS who missed much of her senior yr. Gossip? You better believe it! And even now, all these yrs later, I can tell you her name, first and last. [She had a name that sounded so much like a black girl, bless her heart, but she was a redhead covered w freckles.]
If today her out-of-wedlock child became the POTUS, there are so many of us who would remember her story. If the school and/or state tried to pull a fast one, and portray the offspring as from a traditional marriage [for instance] we would speak up. If no one listened, at the very least we would post on blogs and other online venues. The truth would come out.
The idea that SAD disappeared for her entire senior yr from an island community w but a single HS, and no one gossiped is beyond bizarre. If it had happened, they would have talked. That is the way it is at that age.
Nor do I buy the idea that every single one of them could have been silenced. That is an example of making a conspiracy so big and so crazy, it gives the whole eligibility community a bad name. Obama’s people are thugs but they don’t have superpowers. He can’t shut every member of an island community up; he’s just not that god-like.
Then how could all of 0mugabe’s fellow students at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard - and Punahou - all have been silenced? A much harder task, since there were so many more of them.
You might do that, but many people would not. Where there is a strong community and sense of pride in the school, a lot people simply won't rat out their childhood friends. Punahou certainly has that vibe. If Barry missed one or two years of middle or junior high school because he was off attending another school somewhere on the globe under a different name... I don't think his classmates would rat him out.
Mercer Island HS, though public, was/is in an isolated, wealthy community, with a very unconventional revolutionary curriculum and teachers... I can see a similar situation there too. And there is another 20 years of history on Punahou to further cloud the issue.