Malia Obama watches as her parents hug after President Obama’s farewell speech in Chicago, January 10, 2017 (Getty Images)
While most of the country’s attention was focused on the eclipse, former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama were helping their eldest daughter move into her dorm at Harvard University on Monday.
Malia Obama is attending her parents’ alma mater after taking a gap year that included interning with Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The family arrived a day before students’ official move-in day.
A woman who was visiting the university with her sons, niece, and nephew saw the Obama family and took a video of the parents leaving a building on campus. “We walked right by Malia, my mouth just dropped and I froze lol could not even take a close-up picture of her,” said Sandly Alteon-Senat in a Facebook post.
Known to get emotional about his daughters, the former president (and first lady) wore dark sunglasses while exiting the building.
As the former first daughter’s arrival became known on campus, a guy tweeted his excitement as he saw her “moving into her dorm like 30 yards from mine as I’m typing this.” The next evening, another student tweeted about being 20 feet away from her in the dining hall, “wowwwwww i’m shook,” she said.
While another student plots to become her BFF, it looks like the Harvard freshman has already made some friends of her own.
As students become accustomed to seeing her on campus, the shock and media attention will eventually fade, according to Elliot King, a professor of communication at Loyola University Maryland.
King told The Washington Post that “when you see somebody every day, they stop being a celebrity. Part of being a celebrity is the distance, their mediated image. You’re not really seeing the flesh-and-blood person who has to raise their hand and answer a question or be your lab mate.”
The Sidwell Friends School graduate is also taking things into her own hands as she politely declined a media interview on campus this week.
Though she hasn’t reportedly declared a major at Harvard, it’s clear that one of her interests is the entertainment industry with the Weinstein gig and a 2015 internship on the set of HBO’s Girls.
