Will another Obama call New York City home? Possibly, according to the New York Daily News, which says that Malia Obama and her mother, first lady Michelle Obama, were spotted in the Big Apple on Friday touring New York University, Barnard College and neighboring Columbia University. Malia’s father—you know, the president—graduated from Columbia, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in 1983.
Needless to say, the visit was big news on the campuses. Malia, 16, is a junior at the prestigious Sidwell Friends school in Washington, D.C.
“Malia was all smiles and seemed like a really nice person,” Barnard student Johanna Fuller, 21, who snapped a photo of the first daughter on campus, told the News. The Obamas were later seen lunching with friends at a café in Morningside Heights.
At New York University in lower Manhattan, a student who spotted the two tipped the school newspaper about the visit, according to the publication NYULocal.
“Apparently everyone was told that the elevators were ‘shut down’ for the 10 minutes they were in the building … but I knew the truth,” the news site quoted the tipster as saying.
Meanwhile, students at NYU, with its arty vibe, are pushing for Malia to enroll there.
“Malia made headlines last month when a photo surfaced of her wearing a T-shirt featuring the logo of Brooklyn rap collective Pro Era, so she’d fit right in at NYU,” NYULocal writes.
Malia grabbed national headlines last summer when she was spotted wearing a Stanford University T-shirt while on a family vacation, triggering speculation about whether she would attend the California institution.
Read more at the New York Daily News and NYU Local.