Sarah Palin’s College Years Left No Lasting Impression

Sarah Palin, then Sarah Heath, left, with classmate Stacia Crocker at a dorm party at the University of Idaho. She wasn’t out to get attention, one former classmate said. She kept to herself.

Governor Sarah Palin was a disastrous vice presidential choice for the Republican party and now we learn that she was a forgettable, unremarkable college student.  In 14 days it will be time for the governor to pack her bags and return to governing Alaska through its many economic and social challenges which need her undivided attention.

In the five years of her collegiate career, spanning four universities in three states, Palin left behind few traces. Not many professors or students even remember her. Reported from Moscow, Idaho — What can we learn about our political stars from impressions they made in college?

Sen. John McCain is remembered as a passionate contrarian who won the hearts of his classmates at the Naval Academy. Sen. Barack Obama, who attended Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law School, is remembered as a daunting scholar and calming influence. Sen. Joe Biden, who had a brush with plagiarism at Syracuse University College of Law, is remembered fondly by professors who found him charming.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, however, is barely remembered at all.

In the five years of her collegiate career, spanning four universities in three states, Palin left behind few traces.

“Looking at this dynamic personality now, it mystifies me that I wouldn’t remember her,” said Jim Fisher, Palin’s journalism instructor at the University of Idaho, where she graduated with a bachelor of science degree in journalism in 1987.

Palin, he said, took his public affairs reporting class, an upper-division course limited to 15 students. “It’s the funniest damn thing,” Fisher said. “No one can recall her.”

“I don’t remember her,” said Roy Atwood, Palin’s academic advisor at the university.

Indeed, interviews with a dozen professors yielded not a single snippet of a memory.