So you say three people remember him. Did he merely audit classes? If he did attend as a full-time matriculated student as you imply, the questions still stand: 1. How did a below average 'stoner' at Occidental gain admission to an elite Ivy League university?????
2. Perhaps you know the answer to this but what exactly PROMPTED this moron to suddenly, two years in, apply to a school on the east coast, a place he had never actually lived,...and it HAD to be Columbia, not Yale etc.?????? Did some friend suggest it to him? A kid with NO money to speak of, who used his dough to get high, suddenly decides.....Yeh, Columbia, that's the ticket!
Neither do I.
However, there was a similar thread yesterday with dozens of FReepers parroting the line that none of his classmates or professors remembered him. This thread is also full of comments about how nobody remembered him - far more comments about that than comments on his foreign student status. In fact, the author of the article makes the mistake of stating that nobody remembers Obama, when that's simply not true.
As conservatives, our currency in the marketplace of ideas should be facts. When we say that nobody remembers Obama from Columbia we're not dealing in facts.
Your other questions - such as how did Obama get to Columbia - are excellent questions.