Obama's Columbia Years (Could you spend 2 years at Columbia without classmates remembering you?)

American Thinker ^ | 08/08/2012 | Michael Iachetta

[SeekAndFind]

My fellow Columbian Wayne Allyn Root may well be correct when he suggests that President Obama transferred to Columbia in fall '81 as a foreign exchange student, and I support his challenge to the president to prove otherwise. At the same time, I'd like to provide some context that may explain how Barack Obama could spend two years at Columbia without Mr. Root or a random selection of 400 classmates remembering anything about him.

The first thing to note is that Columbia was a male-only school in those days (the first co-ed class was the class of '87). This means that it was a far less social place than most colleges. Mr. Root was no doubt more outgoing than I was, but in my experience, the time period when it was easiest to meet friends at Columbia was during freshman orientation and during the first semester of freshman year living in a dorm. As someone who transferred to Columbia as a junior, Barack Obama would have missed out on those opportunities. This is in addition to the obvious point that there wasn't much reason for anyone to spend a lot of time hanging out on campus with all of Manhattan a mere subway ride away.

Classes at Columbia typically had 40-100 students in those days, with a few classes having as many as 150-200 students. In my experience, the norm was for students to come to class, sit down, listen to the lecture, take notes, and leave. I only recall one instance of a student asking a question in class in all of my time there.

Consequently, I didn't get to know many English majors just because they were English majors. The only exceptions to this pattern were the required core courses in Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization,

[libstripper]

It doesn't surprise me that there was no requirement for an undergraduate senior thesis at Columbia when the Illegal was there. There was also no such requirement at the University of Illinois, which I attended from 1961-1967, undergraduate and law. What was true at Illinois, and was probably true at Columbia while the Illegal was there, is that juniors and seniors, particularly in political science courses, were required to do extensive writing, especially term papers. Senior year in law school also produced similar writing requirements. Thus, even absent any senior thesis at Columbia, the Illegal should have left a significant paper trail that left excellent evidence of how he thought and his writing style. His writing style is the more important of the two because writing style is as distinctive and nearly unchangeable as fingerprints, meaning those old papers would be a gold mine in determining whether he actually wrote Dreams from my Father, which was probably written by Bill Ayers with, IMHO, substantial assistance from David Axelrod.

This article also does not diminish the importance of how the Illegal got into Columbia and how his stay there was financed. Logically, affirmative action or not, his dubious performance at Occidental and in the last two years of high school should have precluded his admission to Columbia or, at least, kept him from getting a scholarship. Nevertheless, he did get in and received some form of extensive financing. How did he do it?? My guess is he received heavy sponsorship and massive financial support from a number of murky, sinister anti-Ameridan leftists.

That financing and the the fact that his college and law school papers would show he did not write Dreams are probably the two biggest reasons he will never release his college and law school records.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I graduated from Iowa in ‘72 and TAs did most of the teaching while the profs rarely made an appearence.
Brian Ross was in my class in J school.

[NTHockey]

In my ChE classes at University of Florida, we had a student who never attended classes because he worked all night. He always showed up for tests - and aced every test. He was a straight A student and we knew we had to study harder just to keep up with a guy who never came to class.

So Phil, if you’re out there thanks for pushing us.

[Proud2BeRight]

If the media really wanted to they could get records from there. They don't want to. 1. They are Obama/leftist lapdogs. 2. If they would even look for it, they will be branded “birther-like”, called nuts and run out of their profession.

Saul Alinsky Rule 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”

Journalism is DEAD! There is no searching for truth and facts anymore if it comes to Rat corruption, lies or crimes. There is only regurgitating the leftist talking points.

[wildbill]

Back in the day when I went to Columbia there was no absolute requirement that you attend classes and many professors did not take attendance although in a small class it would be noticed if you were absent.

The kicker was that if you missed too many classes, you had to have a final grade of B- or better or you failed the course. I had a lot of classes where I seldom, if ever, attended, relying on my ability to pass the final by reading the material while cramming for the final exam.

[FrankR]

A third conclusion might be that he only APPLIED to Columbia, but never actually went as he claimed in his book. Maybe THAT is the fact he’s trying to hide, the he applied as a foreign exchange student and got caught, or was never accepted.

[Doc Savage]

I disagree with many of your comments but based solely on my own experience. I spent four years as an undergraduate at a college with an enrollment of 15,000 students. This was a university and they had a graduate program. I lived in dorms the entire four years. I knew hundreds of students by name, especially those in the areas of biology and chemistry, although I literally knew several thousand individuals over the four years through sports, student government, dating, and ancillary classes.

Now, some 50 years later I am not saying that I would remember each person by name, but if shown a photo of them at or near that age, if they were in the public spotlight and I knew that they had attended my college at the same time I would recognize them instantly.

I cannot, however, say the same for graduate school. I knew and remember many individuals but the classes were smaller and we had no contact with the other graduate schools within the university. But if Obama had been in my biology classes I would remember him instantly.

Just my experience,... and doesn't seem to jibe with yours.

[Wurlitzer]

“Perhaps an Ivy League diploma doesn’t mean much in the real world, and there should be a twenty year moratorium barring these hot-house flowers from taking government positions”

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Not just a moratorium on government jobs. They do as much damage in the private sector.

I worked for a company, larger than Kodak (in its good years) that had been in business 88 years without a single layoff.

Between the two owners, they had 3 sons that were sent to Harvard and returned with their MBAs and proceeded, in 3 very short years, to run the company into bankruptcy and gobbled up by a Japanese firm and now is a shadow of its former self.

I then worked for a company which, at the time, was the world’s largest commercial printer, and the majority stockholder died and left his useless son to run the place. He used all his wonderful MBA skills to run that company into bankruptcy.

Anecdotal to be sure, but in my experience someone with minimal expertise running anything using only theories from their MBA is dangerous.

[Doc Savage]

The question here isn’t did someone (Root) remember him. The question is why hide the documents PROVING he was there, ...and the only reasonable explanation is FRAUD.

[fso301]

Few people from a medium sized university who were not into the Greek thing, or athletics would be remembered 30 years later by very many alumni.

[Scoutmaster]

Michael Iachetta didn't even conduct a simple Google search before writing this article.

Phil Boerner, who was his classmate and first roommate at Columbia, remembers him and has spoken about it. Michael Wold (current MTV president) has confirmed that Obama was a classmate. Professor Michael Baron has gone on and on about Obama's brilliance in class in a manner that will make you gag.

I think it's odd that only two classmates and one professor have come forward.

However, 'we', including journalists like Iachetta, keep repeating that NO classmates and NO professors remember Obama. That's not the case.

[tired&retired]

What are the odds that O’Bummer was a CIA operative and his visits to Pakistan were part of his work, while Columbia was just a cover that was created? If he were in a witness protection program he wouldn’t enter public politics.

I hope they keep digging as it does smell a bit!

[Doc Savage]

A third conclusion might be that he only APPLIED to Columbia, but never actually went as he claimed in his book. Maybe THAT is the fact he’s trying to hide, the he applied as a foreign exchange student and got caught, or was never accepted.

Frank, I'd be willing to accept that if it weren't for the fact that Harvard Law ACCEPTED the putz! He had to submit transcripts to Harvard. Surely someone would have noticed they didn't exist.

On the other hand, I do know that leftist colleges in those days did accept BLACK students who had no scholastic background whatsoever. It's even possible some rich Saudi muslim - for whatever hidden reason - merely picked up the phone and said let this kid in. I wouldn't put it past Harvard in those days,...and NOT even these days!

[sportutegrl]

Maybe more would have remembered Barack if they would have used the name, “Barry Soetero”, instead of Barack Obama.

[Oratam]

Lit. Hum. and CC are nearly the entirety of one's freshman and sophomore years at Columbia. Soetoro missed those. That alone is interesting considering how essential the "Core Curriculum" is to Columbia.

Why was he given a pass?

[chessplayer]

2. The records have been completely destroyed and the revealing of this fact would beg the question why they were destroyed.

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The records have to be there or somewhere, otherwise he wouldn’t be spending $4 million to hide them.

[Batman11]

“Given the fact that the jug-eared moron is an unaccomplished, shiftless and lazy, drug-addled loner, my first inclination was “yes”, however, once I considered the reality that he is also an overbearing, ignorant, self-aggrandizing, affirmative action enabled, arrogant, no talent a$$ clown, it would be hard not to remember the vile creature.”

This is one of the best descriptions of Bozo that I have seen!

[varyouga]

College is not like high school where everyone goes to the same building on the same schedule and knows each other. There were no assigned seats, most students don’t even know the name of someone sitting next to them and many professors didn’t even call us out by name. Showing most students from Obamas college years never heard of him doesn’t prove anything.

I went to a huge University and estimate 99.9% of people attending the same years I did would not know me. I base this number on 100 friends/acquaintances out of about 100,000 undergrad students enrolled during those years. All of the friends I made were not from classes (most engineers are such geeks :)

Among those who took the same classes I did in engineering school, an even smaller percent would remember me. I rarely went to class and was better at learning the material on my own (I doubt this is the case with Obama). The only students who might remember me were from the small mandatory lab classes of 10 people or less.

I was never close to and don’t keep in touch with anyone I had class with.

[FrankR]

That’s basically what I’m saying, with all of the other skulduggery that has went on in this creep’s life, and his connections, he could have submitted more of his famous forgeries and some political influence to get into Harvard.

But, theories abound with no one proving a thing. Obama is like the old western town run by the rich cattle baron, who owns the town, the sheriff, the mayor, and the newspaper...who’s going to step up to challenge him?

[Iron Munro]

If this one person knew Obama or not isn’t the main point as I see it.

So far there are ZERO other people who have come forward to say they knew Obama, or remember him, in the years he claims to have been at Columbia.

That is almost unbelievable, considering he is now the president.

People are always eager to announce their close encounters with celebrities and presidents - so where are the people who can say they were in class with the man who became President Of The USA?