From http://drorly.blogspot.com/
There is a biography of Barry Soetoro ‘s Occidental College days. It states that when Barry Soetoro was 18-19 he attended school as BARRY SOETORO. And it wasn’t until he met a girl by the name of REGINA that was the first to start calling him Barack. See:
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/obama-at-occidental-college/
The importance of this is that it clearly shows that Barry was using his Indonesian name, and of course, his Indonesian passport.
The International Herald Tribute (The Global issue of the New York Times)
also states:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/08/america/obama.php
“Nearly three decades ago, Barack Obama stood out on the small campus of Occidental College in Los Angeles for his eloquence, intellect and activism against apartheid in South Africa. But Obama, then known as Barry, also joined in the party scene.”
The LA Times also claims below that Barry was the choice of names that Barry Soetoro used when he first arrived from Hawaii to Occidental:
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/29/local/me-oxy29
“Memories of 1980 at Occidental College’s Haines Hall have the standard fragments of the era: stereos blasting the B-52’s through the dorm, pot-fueled bull sessions about the revival of draft registration, late-night cramming for economics exams.
“That otherwise private nostalgia took on public significance this month when a former Haines Hall resident from Hawaii known at the time as Barry announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to run for president of the United States.”
Even Occidental College states that Newsweek reported that Barry entered their college as BARRY SOETORO under his Indonesian passport and NOT as Barack Obama.
It was at Occidental where he stopped being called “Barry” and became Barack Obama, Newsweek pointed out in its account of Obama’s formative years that featured his black-and-white freshman photo on the cover. “It was when I made a conscious decision: I want to grow up,” he told the magazine.
One of Barry Soetoro’s college buddies says this of our Indonesian student:
http://www.verdugomonthly.com/article.php?id=382&IssueNum=32
“Tom Moyes remembers the first time he heard the name Barack Obama. It was in the fall of 2004, after the electrifying speech Obama delivered at the 2004 Democratic Convention. That was the oration, of course, which introduced the young would-be Illinois Senator to America and inspired an instant following not only in the U.S. but around the world. Moyes had missed the speech because he was on an extended vacation in New Zealand at the time. “So I pick up this newspaper,” says Moyes, who grew up in San Gabriel and graduated from Occidental College in Eagle Rock, “and it has this huge article about this guy Barack Obama. And it says he had gone to Occidental at the same time I was there. And I said to myself, ‘There’s no way.’ I’d never heard the name Barack; I’m thinking it must be a mistake. “So I call a friend I went to Oxy with, Ken Sulzer, and I say, ‘Ken, I’m down here in New Zealand and there’s this article about some guy named Barack that went to college with us. Who is that?!’” “I said, ‘That’s Barry, man,’” says Sulzer, using the nickname Obama went by during his youth, “the guy with the big afro who lived across the hall from me in the dorm.’
It is clear that the students at Occidental did not know Barry Soetoro by the name of OBAMA. Instead he was using his Indonesian name and passport. This story cleverly hides the fact that the confusion came not from the first name Barry or Barack, but because of the LAST NAME Soetoro vs. Obama.
Okay so why did Barry suddenly change his name from Barry Soetoro to Barack Obama a year after he entered school? (I don’t believe that REGINA story above.) It was simple. His mother and adopted dad got divorced in August of 1980. So naturally, when he entered Occidental in 1979 he used his Indonesian name...then immediately after his mom’s divorce he desired to revert back to his birth name of Barack Obama.
See divorce records at: http://decalogosintl.org/documents/Soetoro_Divorce.pdf
It sure would be interesting to know whether he entered Occidental as a foreign student using an Indonesian passport, and if he used that passport to go to Pakistan in 1981, and when he stopped using said passport. And if he ever held a US passport before hitting the bigtime.
See post 210.
You’re reaching a bit here. He went by “Barry Obama” from the time he moved back to Hawaii circa 1970. There’s no reason the NZ guy would have remembered him as much more than “Barry the black guy down the hall.” I’m younger than Barry and I can barely remember any of the last names of white students beyond my close group of friends at college, much less the “strange ethnic” last names of people in my dorm one year who were Indian etc etc. Barry went to college (only 2 yrs @ Oxy remember) under the name Obama and any foreign student aid he got was due to his Kenyan origins, not his Indonesian connection.
Post #210 doesn’t *quite* say he was on an Indonesian passport, nor that he was attending as a foreign student, but...