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Barry’ed Treasures

Obama memorabilia from Occidental College Special Collections

A future exhibit for the Obama Presidential Center Museum will highlight the president’s time at Oxy—and we’re looking for your memorabilia from that era

When “Barry” Obama ’83 arrived on the Occidental campus in the fall of 1979, “My Sharona” by the Knack was the No. 1 song in the country, a 24-hour sports channel named ESPN was just getting off the ground, and Chrysler was borrowing $1.5 billion from the government to save itself from bankruptcy. But what was going on in Eagle Rock? Student newspapers tell much of the story, as do Oxy publications from that era. But we suspect there’s so much more out there.

Working with the curators at the Obama Presidential Center Museum, Oxy Special Collections is gathering materials of campus life reflecting Obama’s time at the College (1979 through 1981) for Oxy’s archives as well as the exhibit. In the interest of better documenting that time in Occidental history, we are looking for artifacts from that era—personal photos, papers, recordings, etc.

If you have any items to potentially share, please contact Dale Stieber, director of Oxy’s Special Collections and College Archives, at dstieber@oxy.edu. Io Triumphe!

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A 1981 admission prospectus, Occidental College: Possibilities and Realities, included an image of Obama in the library stacks. Student photographer Thomas Grauman ’83, on assignment for Oxy’s Communications Department, asked his friend to pose for the photo.

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Obama published two short poems in the student literary magazine Feast. In a 2012 interview with PBS’ Frontline, writer Margot Mifflin ’82 described Obama’s poem “Pop”—about his maternal grandfather, who helped raise him—as “this very detailed portrait of the conflict between the boy who wants to be independent going up against the man who in some ways controls his life, but who he loves, and who is both an obstacle and an enabler in his life.”

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For the second issue of Plastic Laughter, edited by Mark Dery ’82 and published in 1981, Obama contributed the short poem “Underground.” (How short? It’s 38 words.) Cover art by Kimberly Wexman ’83.

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Ms. magazine editor Gloria Steinem spoke to a Thorne Hall audience of more than 800 people on Oct. 9, 1980. The feminist icon was one of a number of high-profile guest speakers during Obama’s time at Oxy—but no word if he was among those attending. (Comedian and activist Dick Gregory—whose vegetarian diet Obama reportedly adhered to on Sundays—canceled a planned talk on campus in 1981.)

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In 2011, when asked what his favorite class in college was, President Obama responded that it was a political theory class at Oxy taught by Professor Roger Boesche. Pictured is a mimeographed syllabus from a later iteration of Boesche’s course.

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