EAGLE ROCK — Barack Obama spent just two years at Occidental College, but that time is considered a key period on the path that led to his inauguration as president Tuesday.

Obama has credited the small liberal arts college with transforming him into a serious student and an activist headed for a career in public service.

“It was when I made a conscious decision: I want to grow up,” Obama told Newsweek in a March 31 story that featured his freshman picture on the cover.
Obama attended Occidental from 1979-81, then transferred to Columbia University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1983.

In a May 18 commencement speech at Wesleyan University, Obama said during his first two years of college “values of hard work, honesty, empathy and compassion finally resurfaced after a long hibernation.”

Obama said the resurgence of those values were possibly the result of “values my mother had taught me,” or “perhaps because of the example of wonderful teachers and lasting friends, I began to notice a world beyond myself.”

At Occidental, Obama became active in the movement to oppose South Africa’s policies of racial separation known as apartheid and “began following the debates in this country about poverty and health care,” he said at the Wesleyan University graduation speech.

Obama gave his first public speech at Occidental, at a Feb. 18, 1981 rally outside Coons Hall urging the university’s trustees to divest from South Africa.
There was also another change to Obama at Occidental. He stopped being called Barry, and used his given name, Barack.

Although Obama has not been back to Occidental since transferring in 1981, there are several connections to him there, Colleen Sharkey, Occidental’s associate director of communications, said.

Roger Boesche, who taught Obama his first political science class, still teaches at Occidental.

“He’s incredibly proud and happy to see that Obama’s talking about Lincoln and the Federalist Papers and other things that he began to learn about at Occidental,” Sharkey told City News Service.

Brian Newhall, the Occidental men’s basketball coach and a classmate of Obama’s, and his brother, Eric, a professor of English and comparative literature, both played pickup basketball against Obama in their undergraduate days, Sharkey said.

Occidental has “an open invitation” to Obama to visit the campus, Sharkey said. “We hope in the next few years that he'll be able to fit that in,” she said.

Occidental students, faculty and staff gathered at the college’s Keck Theater Tuesday morning to watch television coverage of the inauguration. Many students wore “BarOxyWear,” Occidental’s one-of-a-kind clothing line that honors Obama’s connection to the college, Sharkey said.

Occidental’s 1,825 undergraduate students “see a brighter future” with Obama as president thanks to his time at Occidental “where broad viewpoints are expected,” Sharkey said.

“They have so much confidence knowing from where he came that he’s going to do a great job and face down a lot of really difficult problems our country faces right now,” Sharkey said.

Before Obama’s election as president, the alum with the biggest claim to fame was Jack Kemp, who went from Occidental to a career in the old American Football League before becoming a nine-term congressman, secretary of housing and urban development and the 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee.

Obama’s inauguration will make Occidental College the third West Coast college or university with an alumnus who became president, joining Stanford University (Herbert Hoover) and Whittier College (Richard M. Nixon).