Where Are Your Transcripts, Mr. Obama?

From The New York Sun:

Obama’s Years at Columbia Are a Mystery

He Graduated Without Honors

By ROSS GOLDBERG, Special to the Sun | September 2, 2008

Senator Obama’s life story, from his humble roots, to his rise to Harvard Law School, to his passion as a community organizer in Chicago, has been at the center of his presidential campaign. But one chapter of the tale remains a blank — his education at Columbia College, a place he rarely speaks about and where few people seem to remember him.

Contributing to the mystery is the fact that nobody knows just how well Mr. Obama, unlike Senator McCain and most other major candidates for the past two elections, performed as a student.

The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript, despite an academic career that led him to Harvard Law School and, later, to a lecturing position at the University of Chicago. The shroud surrounding his experience at Columbia contrasts with that of other major party nominees since 2000, all whom have eventually released information about their college performance or seen it leaked to the public.

For better or worse, voters have taken an interest in candidates’ grades since 1999, when the New Yorker published President Bush’s transcript at Yale and disclosed that he was a C student. Mr. Bush had never portrayed himself as a brain, but many were surprised to learn the next year that his opponent, Vice President Gore, did not do much better at Harvard despite his intellectual image. When Senator Kerry’s transcript surfaced, reporters found that he actually had a slightly lower average at Yale than Mr. Bush did…

The Obama campaign declined to comment for this article and did not offer an explanation for why his transcript has not been released. But observers speculated that one reason might be the racially charged nature of the election. Mr. Obama has acknowledged benefiting from affirmative action in the past, and details about his academic performance might open him up to critics eager to accuse him, probably unfairly, of receiving a free ride, Mr. Kabaservice said…

In contrast with the rest of Mr. Obama’s life story, little is known about his college experience. He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia in 1981. The move receives only a mention in Mr. Obama’s 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” which instead devotes that chapter to his impressions of race and class struggles in New York.

An article in a Columbia University publication, Columbia College Today, reported that Mr. Obama has portrayed Columbia as a period of buckling down following a troubled adolescence. He did not socialize much, he has said, instead spending a lot of time in the library, “like a monk.” He has also stated that he was involved to some extent with the Black Students Organization.

Federal law limits the information that Columbia can release about Mr. Obama’s time there. A spokesman for the university, Brian Connolly, confirmed that Mr. Obama spent two years at Columbia College and graduated in 1983 with a major in political science. He did not receive honors, Mr. Connolly said, though specific information on his grades is sealed. A program from the 1983 graduation ceremony lists him as a graduate…

This otherwise commendable article fails to note numerous other questions about Mr. Obama’s academic record. Questions we have repeatedly raised.

For instance, we do not know for certain what Mr. Obama studied in his undergraduate days. He claims he majored in “international affairs,” which seems a bit unlikely for an undergraduate.

And, as the article states, his degree from Columbia is in political science — not international affairs.

Moreover, we do not know why he was accepted into these schools in the first place. Obama himself has suggested he did not have the grades to meet their requirements.

By his own admission, Obama spent his final two years in high school skipping classes, playing basketball, doing cocaine and getting drunk.

Similarly, his admission to Harvard Law school is highly questionable. Where are his LSAT scores? And how does one graduate from Columbia without honors and yet get accepted at Harvard Law?

Lastly, his ascendency to the Presidency of the Harvard Law school would appear to have also been a case of blatant affirmative action, since the student Obama had only written one legal paper — and that was quite short and remarkably undistinguished.

So where are his grade transcripts? So where is the honest and open leadership that Mr. Obama has promised us?