The two years that President Barack Obama spent at Occidental College had a profound impact on his life. It was as a member of Occidental's Class of 1983 that he first began to take the world of books and ideas seriously, and was awakened to the notion that he could make a difference in the world.
Haines Hall
The two years that President Barack Obama spent at Occidental College had a profound impact on his life. It was as a member of Occidental’s Class of 1983 that he first began to take the world of books and ideas seriously, and was awakened to the notion that he could make a difference in the world. The classes he took, the lasting relationships he formed with professors and friends, and his experiences outside of the classroom all helped shape the person he was to become. As he says, Oxy “started giving me a sense of what a purposeful life might look like.”
During his freshman year at Occidental, Obama lived in Room A103 of Haines Hall—a triple he shared with Paul Carpenter ’83, a political science major from Claremont, and Imad Husain ’83, an economics major from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “We had a really good hallway; there were a lot of interesting folks,” says Carpenter, whose family hosted Obama for Thanksgiving. “Barack was funny, smart, thoughtful, and well-liked,” says Phil Boerner ’83, who lived across the hall. “It was easy to sit down with him and have a fun conversation.”
AGC Administrative Center Plaza
In his bestselling memoir Dreams From My Father, Obama writes about the circumstances surrounding his first political speech, made on Feb. 18, 1981, outside of the administration building as part of a movement to persuade the Occidental Board of Trustees to divest the College of its investments in South Africa. “I found myself drawn into a larger role [in the divestment movement] ... I noticed that people had begun to listen to my opinions,” Obama recalled. “When we started planning the rally for the trustees’ meeting, and somebody suggested that I open the thing, I quickly agreed. I figured I was ready.” Obama’s speech was planned as a carefully rehearsed piece of street theater—two white students dressed in paramilitary uniforms dragged him o before he could finish to dramatize what often happened to South African activists. “They started yanking me o the stage, and I was supposed to act like I was trying to break free, except a part of me wasn’t acting, I really wanted to stay up there ... I had so much left to say.”
Rally photo credit: The rally at Coons Hall, Feb. 18, 1981. Thomas Grauman, The New Yorker
Johnson Student Center
The Cooler—a coffee shop and student hangout—was on the ground floor of the Johnson Student Center when Obama was a student. It was there that Lisa Jack ’81, then an aspiring photographer, first met him in the spring of1980 and asked the “cute” freshman to pose for her as part of her photography class with English and comparative literary studies professor Dan Fineman. The negatives then sat unnoticed in her basement for years until the 2008, presidential campaign, when she went down and dug them out. Jack’s images first appeared in Time in December 2008, when the newsmagazine proclaimed Obama its “Person of the Year.”
Images of a young Obama by Lisa Jack ‘81 were taken at the JSC Cooler and now hang in front of Haines Hall.
Swan Hall
Like many students, Obama arrived on campus without a clear idea of what his future might be. It was in the late Roger Boesche’s classroom that he found his inspiration. “Your classroom is where my interest in politics began,” he wrote to his mentor in 2016 when the Arthur G. Coons Professor in the History of Ideas announced his retirement. Boesche’s political theory classes and his knack for making the complex comprehensible made a deep impression.
“You helped instill passion for ideas, not only in me, but in the generations of students who found in your courses inspiration that would guide them forward,” Obama wrote. “Posing questions that have challenged societies through the ages, your teaching and research remind us of the importance of constant inquiry and debate, lessons that are the core of our democracy, and that I’ve drawn on throughout my life, particularly in this Office.”
During a 2009 visit to the Oval Office (pictured), Obama introduced his old professor to his staff by saying, “Professor Boesche taught me everything I know about politics,” adding with a laugh, “But he gave me a ‘B’ on a paper!”
During his sophomore year, Obama took a creative writing course with English assistant professor David James that met twice a week in Room 200 of Swan Hall. James “was good at prompting us to drop our pretentions and write about something authentic,” remembers Margot Mifflin ’82. Obama published his poetry in in the spring 1981 issue of Feast, the student literary magazine, including “Pop,” seemingly about his relationship with his grandfather.
“The class liked it for its honest ambivalence and because it was so unabashedly personal,” says Mifflin. “It was also our first window into his unconventional family life.”
Rush Gymnasium
As a high school senior at Punahou School inHonolulu, Obama was a member of the basketball team that won the Hawai’i state championship. Although he did not play on the intercollegiate level at Occidental, he was a regular at the lunchtime pick-up games played by students and faculty in Rush Gym. Obama was always conscious of what was going on around him, remembers Kent Goss ’83, who playedon the JV team his freshman year. “He saw the court well. He shared the ball. And he wasn’t afraid to go to the hoop.” Eric Newhall ’67, professor of English and comparative literary studies, also played with the future president in those “noonball” games. “I think Occidental’s greatest contribution to American politics lies in persuading Barack Obama that his future did not lie in basketball,” Newhall says.