Obama's political activism started in college
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By Maurice Possley
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
March 29, 2007, 7:13 PM CDT
LOS ANGELES -- Obama's interest in political activism took root at Occidental College, a small liberal arts institution in this city's hilly Eagle Rock section.
He was barely 18 when he arrived in 1977, a kid from Hawaii who still called himself Barry. and was experiencing his first extended time on the mainland. It also was his first exposure to more than a handful of black classmates.
In his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," Obama has portrayed most of his Occidental days as a haze of pseudo-radical talk, parties, alcohol and illicit drugs--not an uncommon experience for college students of that day.
His mother scolded him for turning into a "good-time Charlie," but classmates also saw flashes of depth, talent and seriousness.
Kenneth Sulzer, who lived in the same dorm, remembered long discussions about politics, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a possible reinstitution of the draft. Obama was "relatively quiet. But when he spoke, his opinion was respected," said Sulzer, now an attorney in Los Angeles. "He was on the thoughtful side, even at that age."
The two took classes together and Sulzer was struck by the clarity and conciseness of Obama's mind. "I would take down everything the professor said and dissect it 12 times," Sulzer said. "Barry printed his notes. And it was very short. Probably just one long paragraph."
Another classmate, Amiekoleh "Kim" Kimbrew of Los Angeles, recalled Obama striding across campus in flip-flops. "He was very popular," she said. "There were rumors that he was a Hawaiian prince. It seemed that he always had an entourage. ... The white girls were just in love with him. He was kind of flirty, but he wasn't a player. He was a nice person--a bit arrogant, very confident."
In a self-mocking passage of his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," Obama wrote that he hung out with not only black students, but "the foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets … When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints."
Some took Obama's professed radicalism as posturing.
"I was impressed by the sharpness of Barry's intellect and, like many, his effortless charm," said classmate Mark Dery, a journalism professor at New York University. But "I also harbored an instinctual suspicion of his … suave demeanor."
With college being a time of growth, Somewhere along the line Barry, the name of the boy from Waikiki, gave way to Barack, the name he inherited from his Kenyan father.
For the most part, Obama's commitment to social activism was limited to coffee-house talk. But near the end of his time at Occidental, he got caught up in protests against apartheid in South Africa, helping plan a large campus rally demanding that the college divest investments there.
He opened the rally in a bit of street theater, he recalls in his memoir, speaking for a couple of minutes until two white students in paramilitary dress dragged him away in mid-sentence. That cameo so impressed Rebecca Rivera, another rally participant, that she wondered why he hadn't been more politically active on campus. She made a mental note at the time to "try to get him involved."
Obama spent just two years at Occidental, shifting to Columbia University in New York to complete his undergraduate degree. He said in a recent interview that he had begun to weary of the parties and fretted about a lackadaisical approach to his studies. He grew more introspective and serious. His mother's warnings were beginning to take hold.
Seeking a fresh start, Obama transferred for his junior year to Columbia University in New York City. Classmates and teachers from those days remember him as studious and serious, someone who hit the library in his off hours instead of the bars.
Michael Baron, who taught international politics, said Obama always was in the thick of class discussions and wrote his class paper on the politics of Soviet-U.S. disarmament talks. Baron gave him an "A."
"If I had to give one adjective to describe him, it is mature," said William Araiza, who took an international politics class with Baron's class with Obama. "He was our age, but seemed older because of his poise and the calmness with which he conducted himself. He was a standout in the seminar. He had a kind of a breadth of perspective that a lot of us didn't have."
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