Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University in 1981. According to the New York Times, Obama "suggests in his book that his years in New York were a pivotal period: He ran three miles a day, buckled down to work and 'stopped getting high,' which he says he had started doing in high school. Yet he 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." Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the newspaper in October 2007, "He doesn’t remember the names...