Barack and Michelle Obama are about to become empty nesters! The couple’s youngest daughter, Sasha Obama, is set to begin classes at the University of Michigan on Tuesday, September 3.
The Detroit News reported on Wednesday, August 28, that the 18-year-old was spotted on campus with Secret Service agents this week after attending freshman orientation earlier in the summer.
“I was walking by, pushing a vacuum, and she walked out right in front of me,” third-year film student Zach Lassen told the newspaper. “I said, ‘Excuse me.’ It was a crowded hallway with her and some Secret Service dudes. … It’s pretty cool.”
A fellow incoming freshman, who declined to be named, said she recently saw Sasha near the university’s undergraduate library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She said they have mutual friends and described the former first daughter as just “a normal student to me.”
Sasha hinted in December 2018 that she had chosen the University of Michigan when she reportedly uploaded a photo of herself and two friends to her private Instagram account with the caption, “So proud to say I’m going to college with my sisters!”
However, the school’s spokesman, Rick Fitzgerald, told The Detroit News that he could not “confirm the enrollment of any student.”
Sasha’s big sister, Malia Obama, took a gap year in 2016 before enrolling at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the 21-year-old is set to start her third year this fall. Former president Barack, 58, and first lady Michelle, 55, both earned degrees from Harvard Law School after completing their undergraduate studies at Columbia University in New York City and Princeton University in New Jersey, respectively.
University of Michigan sophomore Jessica Brinser told The Detroit News that “even though [Sasha’s] family went to Ivy League schools, she decided that UM was the caliber high enough to match that of an Ivy League school.”
“We hope she finds her fit there just like we all have,” Brinser added. “We all love it here. We hope she does too.”
