Obama's alma mater wants a visit

[Pirate Smile]

Obama's alma mater wants a visit

By: Joshua Chambers - Columbia Daily Spectator
Jan 30, 2008 03:25 PM EST

He steps up to the podium, grinning back at the hundreds of young, bright-eyed political junkies drawn to his boyish charm and inspired by his cries for change. Pundits say he’s snagging the youth vote, and students across the country are gearing up to “rock the vote” for him.

But for all his success with the college-age crowd, Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with his own alma mater is marked by enigmatic silence.

Obama, CC ’83, transferred to Columbia as a junior in 1981 from Occidental College in Los Angeles. He spent his dramatic first night in New York City curled up in an alley with nowhere else to go—a far cry from the house on Pennsylvania Avenue where he hopes to be spending the next four years.

Once he settled into an off-campus apartment, Obama hit the books, majoring in political science with a concentration in international relations. He wrote his senior thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament.

But besides these few facts, gleaned from the scant references in his autobiography Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, little else is known about his time at Columbia.
In his book, Obama recalls, “I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk.” Nowhere in his book is any reference made to friends, apart from his unnamed roommate, and he skips quickly over this period of his life.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/8209.html