Actually they would be well known within their major area because students know most folks in their major, and newcomers would stand out. Bill Clinton went to Georgetown. As I went to a Jesuit HS a good number of my classmates went to G’town.When Clinton ran for POTUS my classmates who had gone to Gtown and whom I kept in contact ALL knew Clinton, even though he was a year ahead of them. They KNEW him. No one, as far as I know claims to know Obama from Columbia.
Good points.
What interests me most is that the media investigated more about Joe the plumber Wurzelbacher in 24 hours than they did in Baraq’s 24 months of the campaign.
So a better test would be to ask all the Columbia students who graduated in '83 who majored in the same field as Obama, which IIRC was international relations (see below).
It is my observation that college students very often have a circle of friends that centers around people they met freshman year. So transfer students do tend to know fewer people.
No one, as far as I know claims to know Obama from Columbia.
This has been debunked so many times. There are multiple roommates who remember him, one of whom also transferred from Occidental and published his recollections in a Columbia alumni magazine. One of his fellow students in international relations became president of MTV. There is a professor who remembers him. These people all claim to remember him from Columbia. And of course Columbia itself claims that he went there.
I spoke to some people who went to Yale with Bush. None of them remembered him. They did not assume that he must not have attended Yale or that he skipped class. They decided that he must have been spending most of his time with his DKE fraternity brothers.