10/30/2008
Posted on Thursday, October 30, 2008 11:26:16 AM by NYC_BULLMOOSE
"Recently" I traveled up to the Campus of Columbia University to do some research on BHO's "missing years" as a student at Columbia College.
This is my report (fwiw).
I looked through every page of every issue of The Columbia Spectator published during bho's time on campus (Aug1981-Jun1983).
No smoking guns. Nothing of any great immediate value BUT some interesting leads for further pursuit and some strange stuff to report...
First, what I didn't find is almost as interesting as what I did find...
* BHO is never mentioned in the paper during the period
* No photographs of BHO
* BHO never ran for any College Office
* BHO never participated in any varsity or intramural sports
* BHO "probably" was not an active member of any club or service organization(INCLUDING the Black Student Organization)
* I should probably mention that though I looked at every page in the archive -- some pages / articles had been removed from the "bound copies edition." Someone had used a razor blade to go at the 82/83 book... maybe a total of 20 total pages were damaged or missing... I'm hesitant to make too big a deal of this though it was upsetting -- these MAY have been the only extant copies of these texts. I checked the other archive books in a cursory way (they had records going back to 1906)and couldn't find a book as badly damaged as the 82/83 book. Still, no real evidence of "cleaners" coming thru.
It is important to bear in mind that though Columbia UNIVERSITY is big -- Columbia COLLEGE (the part of the Univ bho attended) is quite small -- ~3,500 total students. The Spectator is the newspaper for the College only. It is pretty easy to get "into" the paper -- in fact it's kind of hard to NOT appear in the paper.
So (to me,a Columbia Alum, anyway)it is weird that bho is TOTALLY absent from The Spectator... Especially given that he is no ordinary "wilting wallflower" -- he is an extrovert, a "natural leader," a community organizer, and gifted orator, a "politically aware" guy, a photogentic minority student in a school with very few brown faces... A guy who transferred to Columbia to be where "the action is"... and he does what -- almost nothing? He doesn't make it into the paper even once in 2 years? No articles (oh -- i forgot -- he is also a talented author), not even a letter to the editor? Pretty strange to me...
So... what we can learn from The Spectator is more about the context bho found himself in at Columbia -- which makes his lack of activity even more puzzling...
The period during which Obama (AUG 1981- JUN 1983)attended Columbia was a time of unusually political activity. A short listing of major Political Movements on or around campus during this period includes:
* The South African Divesture Issue: Active and sometimes violent / destructive protest trying to convince the University to sell its investments in Apartheid South Africa... These protests were spearheaded by the Black Student Organization (BSO)... Which is interesting because BHO said (In Dreams of My Father)that he was a member of the BSO. Though protesting investment in South Africa was not and is not a terribly extreme postion — the METHODS used by BSO were extreme including destruction of property, blockading buildings and in one case injuring a security guard(pushed him down stairs, broken arm)... Interestingly, although Obama describes himself as being VERY active in the anti-apartheid movement at Occidental, he does not appear to have been very active/or prominent in this movement at Columbia (AT LEAST NOT ON CAMPUS). The Spectator has dozens of articels on this movement, interviews with protest leaders and others at protests, lots of pictures. Obama is now where to be found...
* Selective Service / Draft Registration Resistance Movement: Lots of articles about students at Columbia refusing to register for Selective Service (Draft contigency) which becam law under Reagan. Campus protests focused on getting the University to promise it would not cooperate with the federal government enforcement efforts (which mostly involved denying federal grants and loans to students who did not register). In the end, the University basically caved to the demands. Again The Specator has many article, letters to the editor, pictures of protests -- no mention of Obama. Still, for me it raises an interesting question: DID OBAMA EVER REGISTER FOR SELECTIVE SERVICE? I'm not sure he has ever been asked.
* Protests supporting Socialists/Communist in El Salvador. Led by very hard core groups such as Democratice Revolutionary Front of El Salvador. Thought there was no violence, ON CAMPUS, many of these same folks (CU students included) WERE VIOLENT at other events in the city -- notably an anti-Reagan Protest in mid-town. Again, no obvious connection to Obama but given his interests and history -- he likely was very well aware of these activities on campus and off.
* Many, many, many radical speakers on campus at this time including Dick Gregory who called America "a Racist Evil Empire". Abby Hoffman, who urged that students repeat the "activism" (read: violence) that nearly destroyed Columbia in 1968. And an obscure Black Socialist Candidiate for Mayor named "Wells Todd" -- who represented the "Black Socialist Workers Party." Again, nothing in the paper associates Obama with any of these folks -- though these events were all were well publizeds and almost certainly caught Obama's interest and attention.
* Miscellaneous Housing Related Issues and Protests. Columbia owns many building in the neighborhood around the university and is effectively a very large landlord to many poor people in the neighborhood. The protests largely focused on trying to force Columbia to stop evicting tennants / forcing Columbia to provide low-cost or free housing -- your typical socialist BS.
* LOTS of controversy surrounding the arrival of Professor Edward Said (remember him?) -- in fact there was a huge pull-out section of the Spectator discussing Said's presence and the the reaction on campus. Lots of protests from the jewish student orgs. -- several interviews with Said himself appear in the Spectator (he is an inflamatory a$$hole btw). TOns of letters to editor and Op-Ed type pieces. No thing at all connects Obama to this -- but if this is the time when he befiends Said -- he does so in the context of a HUGE anit-Said uproar.
* A discussion / "celebration" of the 25th anniversary of the 1968 Student Uprising at Columbia. One of the most violent and destructive event in Columbia's history. 25th anniversary was in the Spring of 1983 (just b4 bho graduates)-- it is important because the Columbia Administration was VERY worried about the Anti-Apartheid Demonstrations morphing into a repeat of the 1968 campus riots... for their part, the organizers of the Anti-Apartheid events (mostly the aforementioned Black Student Organization)were INTENTIONALLY trying to draw a parallel and in fact wanted to recreate '68.
One other interesting point -- though a non-sequitur.
I had forgotten that Columbia was STILL AN ALL-MALE SCHOOL during the time bho attended (Columbia went coed the year after bho left)... Although Barnard was across the street and there were girls "around"... Since Obama apparently lived WAY off campus -- he probably had very little opportunity to meet and socialize with girls at school...
So... Obama knowingly transferred from a co-ed instituion in sunny Los Angeles with (presumable at least a few) hot girls so that he can go to an ALL MALE school in NYC? Well, to each his own -- but not a choice i would have made at 20 years old...
Oh -- did i mention? -- that Columbia College was famously the "gayest school in the Ivy league" at the time? And not just the student body -- one of the reasons that Columbia was so late to go coed was that many of the (gay) faculty members at the college resisted the move strenuosly. You can draw your own conclusions but I don't think it is out of the question that Obama engaged in a certain amount of sexual experimentation while at Columbia. THe story about the girlfriend featured in "Dreams from my Father" has always smelled funny to me... fwiw.
I'll head back to campus soon to check other resources and will report again when done.
An election for President and Commander in Chief of the Military must strive to be above reproach. Our public institutions must give the public confidence that a presidential candidate has complied with the election process that is prescribed by our Constitution and laws. It is only after a presidential candidate satisfies the rules of such a process that he/she can expect members of the public, regardless of their party affiliations, to give him/her the respect that the Office of President so much deserves.
Ivy League universities are not good at getting students jobs, only grants to be commie nutty organizers. If you are liberal, anything you do is inherently ethical for the cause, but if you are a conservative, and believe in GOD, family or business, your very moral fiber, even down to trivial autonomic responses, is subject to persecution as either dangerously criminal or the result of clinical illness. The lowest level university bureaucrats actually suffer the worst affectations and are likey to be the most vicious persecutors of your children. No business ever trusts such left wing graduates who don't believe in capitalism and become crooks because they are taught the only way business makes money is crooked so they seek to avenge their unemployability through their own crookedness. The universities consider real jobs and competition beneath them, so they want their little sissies to live off grants, even in the hard sciences or business. How many of their engineering professors have Professional Engineering certification? Almost none! They love foreign students because they slave up and don't expect professors to actually work for the tuition, like American students do. No middle class parent should consider sending their kids there, because these schools will destroy your entire family. The only schools that understand middle-class values are for-profits. Middle class parents foolish enough to buy into the Ivy League dream die way too young.
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