Obama was using the name Barack Obama during his Columbia years.
Here’s more:
Wayne Allyn Root says, “I don’t know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me. I don’t have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever! ... Nobody recalls him. I’m not exaggerating, I’m not kidding.
Questioner: Were you the exact same class?
Root: Class of ‘83 political science, pre-law Columbia University. You don’t get more exact than that. Never met him in my life, don’t know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, 20th reunion, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! Who was he, and five years ago, nobody even knew who he was... the guy who writes the class notes, who’s kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him. Is that not strange? It’s very strange...
When asked about his undergraduate training at Columbia University, The New Times states that Obama “declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.”
Many of his classmates don’t remember Obama. He’s not in the yearbook. Columbia couldn’t find a picture of him at school.
What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him. He had transferred from Occidental College in California after his sophomore year because, he told the Boston Globe in 1990, “I was concerned with urban issues and I wanted to be around more black folks in big cities.”
I think that's the key. He didn't go to Columbia to hang out with Columbia students. It sure seems like he doesn't want us to know who he WAS hanging out with, and those people are apparently cooperating in keeping info about his Columbia years under wraps. I suspect it's because they were radical left-wing political activists, many of whom have since outgrown their youthful naivete and now hold respectable jobs, and are no more eager to have their past radical activities publicized than President Obama is. I wouldn't be surprised if there are also a handful who've been "encouraged" to keep quiet -- that would probably be ones who failed to move on to better things, and are thus easily hushed by helping them get jobs or apartments. There's probably at least one seriously unsavory person in the group he spent most of his time with (possibly one with whom he was romantically involved), and that would be the root of the desire to keep this period of his life under wraps.