Obama of Hyde Park

As a University of Chicago graduate and proud alumni, I have a profound love and admiration for Hyde Park, Illinois. It is quite an iconic location on the South Side of Chicago with the Lake on the East Side, the Midway to the south, the interesting 47th street on the north, and an abrupt western boundary near cricket, baseball, and soccer fields.
I have to disagree with Andrew Ferguson's June 16th Weekly Standard piece about "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood" (an interesting read http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/197wxqsf.asp). In the article, Ferguson says, "Hyde Park is different from any neighborhood in Chicago - different from anywhere in American for that matter...The place seems unrooted. It's neither one thing nor the other...it lacks the surprises and variety of a healthy city neighborhood." He goes on to call the community "gated" and "elitist". And perhaps most scathing, Ferguson says that “Everyone seems from somewhere else”. Is Hyde Park different and elitist???
True the undergraduate slogan is "where fun comes to die", and the university has been rated the least fun in the country narrowly edging out Army, Navy, and the Coast Guard Academy. You are likely to find a population that enjoys devouring couscous and other far eastern cuisines while discussing Robert Frost poetry and Kierkegaard. Dogs and cats are named after astrologers, poets, and literary heroes. Corduroy runs amuck. It might be the only place in the country where professors in tweed jackets on bicycles, carefree children with homemade instruments and art projects, athletes, nerds, musicians, environmentalists, Marxists, supply-side economists, and panhandlers can run into each other at an intersection at the same time and think nothing of the encounter. The dating can be summed up: where the odds are good but the goods are odd!
All around this beautiful, traditional campus lays an impoverished ghetto with much crime, drugs, and violence. I used to work at Kozminski elementary school on 54th street. The children were nearly all black, poor, and most likely to fit your stereotypes of South Side Chicago (although it continues to see its testing improve and has a very dedicated and vibrant teaching class that works amazingly hard). The surrounding area is quite unlike the campus community with its comfortable condos, million dollar mansions (think Louis Farrakhan right around the corner) and a plethora of student housing as most students live off campus after their mandatory freshman year in the dorms (the University police department is one of the largest in the country and its officer to citizen ratio is pretty high; keeping the campus area quite safe despite its rough neighborhood).
It is within this mixed area that Barack Obama lives; not too far from Kozminski Elementary where I spent many undergraduate days. For a very wealthy, educated, and famous man, he lives right in the midst of the community. One could walk right up to his front step (before he required Secret Service protection and attention of course), around his home, passed his children on their way to school and so on without even knowing that this important man lived there. Within a few blocks of his home were crime, poverty, drugs; yet he chose to live in Hyde Park and remains a proud and devoted citizen. Most people would not feel comfortable walking the neighborhood even during the day.
It is a man who is willing to be real and not use his fame and fortune to “escape” the realities of the world that I would like to be my president. A man who lives amongst people and joins the struggle while being an actual part of the community should demand our respect. Too many politicians deliberately live in their golden towers, far removed from the ordinary people that make this country diverse and great. Barack Obama lives in my famous, quirky little paradise Hyde Park.
Ferguson was wrong. Depending on the somewhere else you’re from, Hyde Park’s shifting identity can offer all the surprises and variety needed to make you stay. It was enough to make Obama stay and for that, I can be proud of him!