Posted on 02/19/2010 5:44:47 PM PST by Smokeyblue
I was Barack Obama ’83’s roommate at Columbia College in fall 1981. I met him in 1979, when we were freshmen at Occidental College (Oxy) in Los Angeles and our dorm rooms were directly opposite each other.
I came to college as a middle-class guy from Bethesda, Md., where I’d lived from fifth grade through high school. At Oxy, we attended some of the same social events and had late-night philosophical discussions related to our college reading or to current affairs. We attended rallies on campus where we were urged to “draft beer, not people,” and discussed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, apartheid in South Africa, the hostages in Iran and the Contras in Latin America. The crowd we hung out with included men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics and international students. Barack listened carefully to all points of view and he was funny, smart, thoughtful and well-liked. It was easy to sit down with him and have a fun conversation.
We both transferred from Oxy to Columbia in fall 1981. Barack had found an apartment on West 109th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus, and suggested that I room with him. Our sublet was a third-story walk-up in a so-so neighborhood; the unit next door was burned out and vacant. The doorbell didn’t work; to be let in when I first arrived I had to yell up to Barack from the street. It was a railroad apartment: From the kitchen, you walked into Barack’s room, then my room, and lastly the living room. We didn’t have a television or computers. In that apartment we hosted a number of visitors, mostly friends from Oxy who stayed overnight when they were passing through town. Barack was very generous to these visitors. As a host and roommate, he sometimes did the shopping and cooked
(Excerpt) Read more at college.columbia.edu ...
I wonder if Rev. Manning talked with this guy....
Ping.
Not sure if this is old news.
Reading, hmmm.
Funny this should appear now....
I’m not positive but I believe they call it Columbia University although it seems more like a communist nursery school.
A likable guy who seems to have a lot of character. The same has been said of many dictators.
Thanks
sniff...
Phil Bonehead for that
snif
touching, heartwarming rendition of Barrak the marxist goes to college.
(You forgot the barf alert)
No dorm room numbers or house address? How convenient!
The true story of this Marxist's life goes untold.
I’d guess that Rahm paid him by the word.
Obama probably bathed at the local gay Upper West Side bathhouses.
And they didn't have a computer because the only computers available were Apple II E's or those of personal construction.
I call BS on this obviously gay dude.
He is trolling for some favors from our Lord Obama.
Yeah, because I remember my dorm room numbers from the early 90's.
Columbia College is the undergraduate school at Columbia U.
Notice how this guy avoids any talk of politics? I suspect it’s because he is either a liberal himself or or does not want to bad mouth a former friend. (Assuming this whole story is not fiction)
“draft beer, not people,”???
I believe the draft ended in 1975. I was in college then.
The following year Carter the Disaster was elected and
gave amnesty to the draft dodgers in 1977 (if i remember correctly).
If this was 1979 or 1980 as the writer mentions, either
his bong-watered memory is bad or he hung around with
the lefties living in the past.
Looks like this was in the JAN/FEB edition of the alumni magazine. Columbia College is PART of Columbia University.
“West 109th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus”
For sure. This is the first person I have read who admits to knowing BHO back “in the days”!
Strange, that!
I lived on Riverside Dr and 112 st at the time of this narrative. the guy gets all the details right from the radiators to the startling quiet after snows to Toms and the West End.
I don’t know if he gets the stuff about Obama right...
The problem with the college narrative is that this guy claiming to know Obama is the only one from that class who ever knew or heard of the guy...that is my problem with the narrative is that he claims that he and obama went to columbia college—why?
Everyone at the college knew each other. there have been many postings here at free republic about columbia alumni who attend alumni meetings who knew everyone in the class—yet no one knew of obama.
It would be more likely that Obama and this guy went to the school of general studies—where no one knew each other.
Yet that’s not what he says.
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