HYDE PARK — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) will return to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, Monday, but not to finish the coursework at which he was notoriously poor.
Sanders is running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president and will speak at 11:15 a.m. Monday at Rockefeller Chapel as part of the Institute of Politics Road to 2016 series.
Sanders, who graduated in 1964, was not particularly fond of his classes and preferred to be out in the neighborhood on fair housing actions, sit-ins or working on the local alderman’s re-election campaign, according to reports of the senator's time in Hyde Park.
Sanders was an off-and-on-again student. He started in English and then was off that and on to political science.
In 1963, he was off the university entirely and took a year to work on Ald. Leon Despres' re-election campaign as 5th Ward alderman. Despres was a notoriously independent alderman and frequently the target of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s ire. The well known alderman is still probably spoken of more frequently than Sanders, despite the latter's recent rise to national attention.
Perhaps Sanders, the only independent in the Senate, learned something from Despres, who went on to be Mayor Harold Washington’s parliamentarian.
Maybe Sanders will open up about his time on Chicago while he's back on campus Monday.
The event is free and open to the public, but all seats were reserved within a few hours of the event announcement, according to organizers.
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