Updated: More On Obama At Columbia

Updated again and bumped: Obama said he was involved with the Black Students Organization at Columbia. Hmmm. And some other interesting observations. No one in the building he would have been taking classes in most even remembers him? Strange - very strange.

Senator Obama claims to have spent most of his time in the library. He certainly left a light footprint at Columbia during his two years there from 1981 to 1983.

The former vice president of the Black Students Organization, senior Mark Attiah, was shocked to learn that Obama was even a member of the BSO.

"I knew that he graduated from Columbia, but he doesn't talk about it that much, which I get," Mr. Attiah said. "If you're running for president of the United States, you want to connect with the elusive common man, so you're not going to talk about Harvard and Columbia because you might sound elitist."

Coincidentally, Mr. Attiah worked at the 25th reunion of the class of '83 last year, and not surprisingly, reported that Senator Obama did not attend. "But I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn't it be funny if Obama walked through the door right now,'" he said.

In fact, there is not a single picture of Senator Obama in any of the yearbooks from the period when he was a student--he is not even listed as absent in the BSO photo from 1983.

No one from the library in the School of International Public Affairs, the building he would have had most of his classes in as a political science major, remembered him. The chairman of the Political Science Department when Senator Obama was an undergraduate, Mark Chalmers, wrote in an e-mail that he did not remember him, and the two alumni I managed to reach from the class of '83 refused to answer any questions about their old classmate.

Update: From the Freepers - linking to this in The Univ. of Chicago Chronicle:

During the 1980s, Obama directed community-organizing projects in low-income communities in New York and Chicago.

In New York? Has he ever claimed that anywhere else?

While Tom Maguire may or may not be on to something regarding Obama's years at Columbia - h/t Ace - reading Maguire's take reminded me of something else I read and posted on before.

Odd.  Here was a guy who had spent his life hanging with radicals and seeking out causes.  Now, at what was practically Ground Zero for campus activists, he decides to hide in the library.

Well, we know he wasn't only about hanging out in the library from his drug using Pakistani friend who continues to give him money even today. Obama doesn't sound like such a bookworm while at Columbia to me.

While Obama has acknowledged using marijuana and cocaine during high school in Hawaii, he writes in the memoir that he stopped using soon after his arrival in New York. His roommate had no such scruples.

But they obviously hung out together cruising clubs and such? What's next? Obama going to put designated driver on his resume right below community organizer? Is anyone buying that? Come on, Barry - what are you hiding from us? Fess up!

"We were always competing," he said. "You know how it is. You go to a bar and you try hitting on the girls. He had a lot more success."

.... The two, along with others, went out for nights on the town. "He wasn't entirely a hermit," Siddiqi said.

Siddiqi said his female friends thought Obama was "a hunk."

Comments

[SacTownMan]

Yet another blank spot in the life of Xerxes!

No college transcripts, admitted drug user and just happened to make a little trip to Pakistan with his college madrassa bro

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/obamas-college.html

His buddy is an admitted stoner and I'm sure they stayed away from the Pakistani Hashhish and the opium. Yea I believe that!

He didn't hear Wright "talk like that" in twenty years. Yea I believe that!

He knew Ayers as "A guy I knew in the neighborhood". Yea I believe that!

I don't want to punish your success, I just want the guy behind you to get a little!! Yea I believe that!

YOU WILL GIVE TO THE GREAT XERXES!! Yea I believe that!

[Lala]

Lifted from FreeRepublic

Besides learning just what Obama did when he attended Columbia, one must also ask how someone from B-Class Occidental ends his 4 year degree at Columbia with what could not have been more than a C+ (he did not make the lowest level of “with honors” - cum laude) when he graduated Columbia, but somehow, still, not only gets into prestigious Harvard Law but is barely there and becomes lead editor of the Harvard Law Review??????

[LOL]

so according to RCP, Obama now leads by over 8 points. But like you said, McCain is closing

Great source of factual insight you are Dan

[JustADude]

In trying to fill in the large gaps about NYC I came across a note that at Columbia while Obama attended there was an ongoing oral history project at the school which was interviewing past members of the SDS and the Weathermen.

Now if he got involved in that project and spent a lot of time interviewing members like maybe Ayers who lived on 1/4 mile from him at the time.

It seems odd those two keep ending up living in the same neighborhoods.

[Spartan112]

You're using freepers as a source now...that's sad.

You guys are grasping at straws big time. There isn't a single photograph of me in my college yearbooks, and only one of me in my HS yearbook how is that such a big deal?

[Den]

I doubt it is the grades issue. He probably didn't even attend Columbia.

[BobinStamford]

What a devastating expose. The little old man is now poised to surge to victory!

[Lala]

Michelle, behind the scenes

http://africanpress.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/shocking-development-mrs-obama-decides-enough-is-enough-my-husband-was-born-in-hawaii-and-adopted-by-his-step-father-does-that-make-him-unpatriotic-she-asks-on-a-direct-telephone-to-api/

Accusing API of colluding with American internet bloggers in an effort to bring down her husband, Mrs Obama said she decided to call API because of what she termed, API’s help to spread rumours created by American bloggers and other racist media outlets in their efforts to damage a black man’s name, saying she hopes African Media was mature enough to be in the front to give unwavering support to her husband, a man Africans should identify themselves with.

excerpt more at link

[Kristen]

Obama could not have worked on anti-apartheid activities at Columbia without knowing Barbara Ransby. She was a co-founder of the group that spearheaded the effort in 1981 at Columbia which was originally part of the Black Student Organization. She worked on that issue (divestment) until it culminated in April, 1985, with the 3-week Hamilton Hall Blockade (Columbia finally did divest short time later). And if you say you were deeply involved, which he has, they had to have worked together and been friends, unless, of course, they didn’t like one another. But either way she’d have information about Obama if she was asked about it by a reporter and she’s not been. There are others, too, like Dan Armstrong, who co-founded CFSA at Columbia in ’81 with her and continued to work on that issue for several years http://www.findatree.com/daniel.html ).

Now, if they said they didn’t know him, then Obama’s statements that he was deeply involved in that would be shown to be false. And if they did know him, they could share what they knew, if asked.

But here’s the problem for Obama…. When people start looking at someone like a Barbara Ransby, guess where that leads? Google her and and check out the groups she’s involved with these days (End the Occupation, Black Radicals for Obama, MDS, and so on-plus look at her fellow members, other Obama supporters). She’s worked since 1996 at UIC where Ayers works and wrote a letter supporting him to our big Chicago paper. Again…. if you’re a candidate trying to convince all Americans, not just the far left who don’t think those associations present any problem, that you’re not a far-left guy, the last thing you going to do is to let people investigate who your friends and associates were in your college years. Not when they’ve simply moved on to other far-left, actually socialistic or authoritarian causes. Not when you’ve already got other people like Rev Wright in your corner.

BTW, Obama did not leave NY after his Columbia years, 81-83. I've seen a few different reports his jobs kept him there, I believe through sometime early to mid-1985. Even wikipedia says he was there for 4 years.

[Kristen]

Obama could not have worked on anti-apartheid activities at Columbia without knowing Barbara Ransby. She was a co-founder of the group that spearheaded the effort in 1981 at Columbia which was originally part of the Black Student Organization. She worked on that issue (divestment) until it culminated in April, 1985, with the 3-week Hamilton Hall Blockade (Columbia finally did divest short time later). And if you say you were deeply involved, which he has, they had to have worked together and been friends, unless, of course, they didn’t like one another. But either way she’d have information about Obama if she was asked about it by a reporter and she’s not been. There are others, too, like Dan Armstrong, who co-founded CFSA at Columbia in ’81 with her and continued to work on that issue for several years http://www.findatree.com/daniel.html ).

Now, if they said they didn’t know him, then Obama’s statements that he was deeply involved in that would be shown to be false. And if they did know him, they could share what they knew, if asked.

But here’s the problem for Obama…. When people start looking at someone like a Barbara Ransby, guess where that leads? Google her and and check out the groups she’s involved with these days (End the Occupation, Black Radicals for Obama, MDS, and so on-plus look at her fellow members, other Obama supporters). She’s worked since 1996 at UIC where Ayers works and wrote a letter supporting him to our big Chicago paper. Again…. if you’re a candidate trying to convince all Americans, not just the far left who don’t think those associations present any problem, that you’re not a far-left guy, the last thing you going to do is to let people investigate who your friends and associates were in your college years. Not when they’ve simply moved on to other far-left, actually socialistic or authoritarian causes. Not when you’ve already got other people like Rev Wright in your corner.

BTW, Obama did not leave NY after his Columbia years, 81-83. I've seen a few different reports his jobs kept him there, I believe through sometime early to mid-1985. Even wikipedia says he was there for 4 years.

[Spartan112]

Lala got fooled...lollololololol...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/15/fake-michelle-obama-inter_n_134864.html