Obama's 30 or so Former Israeli "Classmates" @ Columbia University Don't Recall Him - AT ALL!

I could not tell you who was my college class president during undergrad years -- heck, I couldn't tell you who was president of my law review either. College students at a large university can have very insular social lives. Moreover, as one who has gone to university in NYC, many of us take advantage of our location and have social lives that are centered on the many unique social/cultural aspects of living in NYC. I find these articles tedious, especially when they are presented as more than they are.

Rather than 'group of people does not remember undergraduate transfer student at enormous school in enormous city' it's 'Proof that Obama is a creation of the illuminati from birth!' or some such stuff.

It's getting tougher and tougher to slog through some of the anti-Obama stuff.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


I cannot tell you everyone who was in my high school class in 1973. But if one of them became president of the USA, it would really jog my memory and I would probably remember them.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


I cannot tell you everyone who was in my high school class in 1973. But if one of them became president of the USA, it would really jog my memory and I would probably remember them.

Originally posted by JustMike
I am quite sure if one of my former classmates went on to became a major political figure, or a rock star or whatever, I'd at least recognize him/her. Yes, people change over time, but not that much.

So, if so many people who should had remembered POTUS Obama at college cannot even recall seeing him around when they were there, I am very dubious if he was ever there at all.

What do you mean?
He wasn't a major political figure or rock star at college, he was JUST a student.

Suddenly becoming famous doesn't mean you are going to instantly remember seeing him if you had no interaction with him in college beyond the cursory. If a student wasn't in your social circle at all, and you were in a class full of very busy students, how would you know them?

I was in a class with a large number of students on multiple occasions and I can tell you that we all didn't interact with each other on a personal level, and the classes themselves were so intense most people were either taking notes, trying to record the professor, or maintaining focus as best they could.

Obama likely had friends in college but these people are simply not them.
How is this unusual? How is it suspicious? Is it possible he simply didn't stand out?

You and the OP are making it seem as if everyone that went to college would have to remember a student that could very likely have been innocuous, reserved, obscure, or even aloof in class just because that person went on to become famous.

That just isn't realistic.

Now if you went to a college with and graduated in an extremely small class then maybe I could understand but you are trying to compare your college experience to everyones college experience and that is just very unrealistic.

If you didn't pay attention to a student in your class, that won't change when they become world famous.
You still didn't pay attention to that person in your class.

- Lee

reply to post by groingrinder


I guess that all depends on how well of an impression he made on you while you went to high school. If you never talked to him, but he spent some time in your classes you still might not remember him. Your example was also high school. More people tend to make bigger impressions on you in high school to make you remember them because they are from your neighborhood, you were going through puberty, and all these other variables. College is different. You meet so many people and you MAY have 1 or 2 classes with the same person. Maybe even a few more, but more then likely mostly you won't seem that person for more then a semester or two. If this same unremarkable guy from my high school example now is in college, I bet you'd remember him even less.

I don't see how it is so unlikely that this isn't the case? This isn't exactly damning evidence of him being a creation of some nefarious plot. At best it's merely a small piece of a larger picture that is required to convict him. If this was the evidence someone presented in a court of law against Obama, you'd be laughed out of court.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


Well, out of thirty people you'd think that at least one of them would remember.. I dunno.

Originally posted by POXUSA
I remember ALL of my classmates -

What college did you go to and how many students were there?

There are 20,000 students currently in Columbia. Granted the number may be smaller in the 80's but still.

Would you remember every one of the 20,000 if you transferred to Columbia as a junior?
Would you expect all of them to remember you BEFORE you became famous?

NO ONE remembered BHO @ Columbia - there is NOT ONE STUDENT OR TEACHER who has come forward...........end of story!!!

You know what? That is SUCH a lie. You can caps lock and bold it if you like and that fact does not change. This nonsense just keeps resurfacing every time someone gullible gets an anti-Obama chain mail in their inbox.

Columbia remembers him, acknowledges him, and has dedicated pages on it's website to him.
You'd think if he was never there that they would have caught on by now. Columbia must be full of morons.

How about his college roommates(?!) article up on the Columbia website?
Does he count as a student?

Barack Obama ’83, My Columbia College Roommate

I was Barack Obama ’83’s roommate at Columbia College in fall 1981. I met him in 1979, when we were freshmen at Occidental College (Oxy) in Los Angeles and our dorm rooms were directly opposite each other.

I remember often eating breakfast with Barack at Tom’s Restaurant on Broadway. Occasionally we went to The West End for beers. We enjoyed exploring museums such as the Guggenheim, the Met and the American Museum of Natural History, and browsing in bookstores such as the Strand and the Barnes & Noble opposite Columbia. - Columbia College

Barack Obama '83 Becomes First College Alumnus To Win Presidency

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Barack Obama ‘83 became the first College alumnus to be elected President of the United States. On November 4, Obama defeated his Republican challenger, Sen. John McCain P’07, ending a marathon campaign that saw Obama rise from a first-term senator to the nation’s first African-American president. - Columbia College

Columbia article on Obama before he was President...

Is He the New Face of The Democratic Party?
By Shira Boss-Bicak ’93
Photos: David Katz/Obama for Illinois

Barack Obama ’83 was sworn in this month as the sole African American in the U.S. Senate, and only the fifth in history. He is the highest-ranking African-American elected official in the United States. - Columbia College

More?

Here's an article Obama wrote as a senior at Columbia that was trashed by a conservative as leftist nonsense:

Young Obama Wrote Article Blaming America For ‘Growing Threat of War’

You won’t find it in his memoir or any of the oodles of words written about him during the campaign, but this reporter has discovered a strikingly naive article Barack Obama wrote about the anti-war movement as a Columbia University senior in 1983. - Human Events

So conservatives have gone from trashing his writings at Columbia as a student, to claiming he never went there.

Good grief.

Do these people think that they are smarter than the entire collective staff and faculty past and present of Columbia college? That if a student who claimed they graduated from the college lied, that only a fringe group would be able to figure it out?

I highly doubt that.

Trash his record as a president. I may even agree with you.
Just stop with the silly conspiracies because these do nothing but make people look foolish and desperate.

- Lee

reply to post by TheLaughingGod


Maybe, maybe not. I'd bet there will be 30 people hard pressed to remember me from my college class in 30 years time. I don't interact with many people in my class outside of projects and studying. I would continue to bet that they'd still have problems remembering me even if I became president. Is it really so hard to believe that a socially inept person went on to become the leader of the free world? Maybe he took some speech classes after college. Who knows? Yet, we get this evidence and we are supposed to IMMEDIATELY jump to him being a manufactured enemy.

I think a lot of people are misreading what I'm saying. I'm not really discounting that he is a product of some nefarious covert agency. I'm just saying that this evidence doesn't prove he is either.

Besides people that were already friends of mine before college, or people I actually befriended in college, I can't remember a soul I went to college with. I could have gone to school with Jesus Christ, and I would be shrugging my shoulders right now if you told me that he attended the same classes, with the same professors, the same years I was in school.

You can dislike Obama all you want, and that's fine, and if you have specific reasons you don't like him, even better. Makes for good conversation. What doesn't make for good conversation is the argument that Obama's entire life his a falsified sham.

Don't like him because of his policies and actions? Great.

Don't like him because of people don't remember him as a classmate? Fallacious.

reply to post by lee anoma


Now this is the kind of evidence I was waiting for. I knew that there was more to this story then was being presented.

really??...birthers have turned in schoolers now??...hey! for all you out there, this took me about 30 seconds to find...but, why do any research? www.factcheck.org...

this is why the rest of us roll our collective eyes, and dismiss republicans, ....LACK OF RESEARCH!!!!!!!

Originally posted by Krazysh0t
reply to post by lee anoma

 

Now this is the kind of evidence I was waiting for. I knew that there was more to this story then was being presented.

What's been presented on those 'scam pages' as "evidence" is laughable - false CIA/Secret Service nonsense information - and this administration is very good at that. There is ZERO evidence........anyone who states that they saw BHO or attended a class with Obama is a paid liar..........The gavel has been slammed on BHO once and for all - case closed.

Obama's Columbia years are certainly foggy but I cannot say that he was a not a student there at the time. He simply left no foot prints. The biggest questionable activity that sprung from his Columbia years was his lengthy trip to Pakistan accompanied by his new roommate. During his trip he also traveled freely to India and Indonesia at a time when the region was hot with unrest. Some suggest that his travel was facilitated by his use of an Indonesian Passport.

the 20-year-old Obama, who was known as “Barry Soetoro,” traveled to Pakistan in 1981 and was hosted by the family of Muhammadmian Soomro, a Pakistani Sindhi who became acting President of Pakistan after the resignation of General Pervez Musharraf on August 18, 2008.

Senate Chairman Muhammad Mian Soomro has become the interim president of Pakistan after the resignation of Pervez Musharraf.

[Interestingly, Barack Obama, eager to boost his foreign policy credentials, can note that he met Soomro decades ago. Obama befriended Soomro's son and stayed at their family home in Pakistan during college.]

pakistanpolicy.com...

During this travel period, his mother was also working in "micro finance" for USAID and the Ford Foundation with Peter Geithner, Tim's father. Her career with USAID dated back to 1968 when the region was hot with all sorts of "intelligence" activity. USAID was a known cover for these operations for decades.

Right after Columbia, Obama was also said to have worked for Business International Corporation. A topic not greatly discussed by Obama in his book. BIC is also a recognized front for the CIA. I can't safely say that Obama ever worked directly for the CIA but he was certainly surrounded by connections to it for most of his life. Some even suggest that his Grandfather was connected as well. Plenty of forks in the road when exploring that angle....

Plenty of Questions swirl during these foggy years of Obama's life. His connections alone are enough to raise an eyebrow of the rationally minded especially his connections to Pakistanis through the years. Just look at the stuff that was discussed regarding the Bush family, the CIA and Skull and Bones etc etc. Obama's activities and those of his family certainly rival and could even top the activities of the Bush family.

Always interesting to discuss the chosen one's past....

Originally posted by Krazysh0t
Now this is the kind of evidence I was waiting for. I knew that there was more to this story then was being presented.

A lot more.
That article from his roommate was written in January of 2009.

Before all of this "no one remembers Obama in College" rubbish started up, so good luck to anyone trying to discredit him as a liberal-plant that was trying to cover for Obama.

Unless they can time travel.

I have to say this site has gone ta bit wonky in a lot of ways and I'm not talking about threads like this. I expect them as they usually occur for any president. They certainly did for Bush when I first came here. It's the support from the staff for obvious hit-job rumors like this that is a bit shocking.

Lately I've been seeing moderators posting support for stuff that even a basic Google search contradicts as outright garbage. Taking things at face-value or just blindly passing along something you could lift right out of an chain mail attack job with no research into its validity.

What's happening with the denial of ignorance ATS?

- Lee

Given the disaster of an administration we now have in power, it occurs to me that he just didn't go to class. Seems plausible.

Originally posted by POXUSA
What's been presented on those 'scam pages' as "evidence" is laughable - false CIA/Secret Service nonsense information - and this administration is very good at that. There is ZERO evidence........anyone who states that they saw BHO or attended a class with Obama is a paid liar..........The gavel has been slammed on BHO once and for all - case closed.

Case and point.

Evidence from Columbia College itself, and past alumni are insufficient to rumors and speculation.

We're not dealing with a topic the OP wants to debate, but rather a notion the OP has already cemented in his mind as 'fact' and wants to have us all believe even in the face of verifiable contradictory evidence.

There is nothing left here to discuss.

- Lee

Originally posted by lee anoma

There is nothing left here to discuss.

- Lee

Agreed. After I read that last post from the OP I really had to wonder why he/she even bothered creating this thread in the first place. I guess there was the assumption that everyone would be on board with the idea that Obama never went to Columbia.

reply to post by Osiris1953


I can't believe the amount of criticism that I took for my first post in the thread. Like I was being the irrational one. All I was asking was for maybe a little bit more evidence and maybe some first hand accounts of other people's memories to see the possibility that someone wouldn't be remembered 30 years later.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


I for one think that it is completely reasonable that even collectively this group of former classmates don't remember Obama. Beyond folks that you make a personal connection with there is no reason for your brain to be ready to actively recall the "extras" in the movie of your life. I have a pretty decent memory... so unless Obama was a particularly memorable character in college I would have forgotten about him as well.