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Cal-Tech graduate on Lazar's credentials

Ken MacGray recently wrote the following:

>Lazar was the first to come out and say that some of his educational
>background had been deleted. Bob Lazar never attended any of the
>universities on an ongoing, year after year basis, going to football
>games and running for student body president. He was a nerd who moved
>around the country because of his parents. He had to petition for his
>diplomas. Friedman's information about when and where Lazar went to
>school was taken from some erroneous internet info, not from Lazar.

It has been mentioned in a number of places that Bob Lazar claims to
have attended CalTech.  Has Bob himself ever made or denied this claim?
If he has indeed made such a claim, did he say whether he was an
undergraduate student or a graduate student there?  This is important,
because if he claims to have been the former, there are some simple
tests to which he should be willing to submit.

My name is Nelson William Clayton.  I was an undergraduate student at
CalTech, with a diploma to prove it.  My undergraduate student ID number
is 74028.  I was there from 1974 to 1980, with a two-year leave of
absence from 1975-1977 to go do the missionary thing in Europe (I having
been a good Mormon boy from a small town in the Great
Basin.....hmmm....maybe I would be an acceptable candidate for Lincoln
County Sheriff).

First, some important points:  CalTech only accepts undergraduate
students who are willing to attend on a full-time uninterrupted basis.
Temporary leaves of absence of up to one year can be granted with the
approval of a special faculty committee (two years being allowed in
special cases like mine).  Transfers from other universities are very
rare, and when they occur they are usually from a small handful of
schools that have a special (3-2) arrangement with CalTech (three years
at the first school followed by two years at CalTech).  Part-time
enrollment during any given school year is not permitted.  Simply put,
enrolling at CalTech is quite a different proposition from enrolling at
a community college.

As for Lazar's having been unusual because he was "a nerd" who was
uninterested in "going to football games or running for student-body
president", this is not at all unusual for a CalTech undergrad.  In
fact, most of the undergrads in my time (which probably overlapped
Lazar's time there, if he was ever there at all) had never been to a
football game.  Many didn't even know who the student-body president
was, and few cared.

Let us now address the assertion that Bob "moved around the country
because of his parents."  This would be quite astonishing.  CalTech is,
essentially, a boarding school.  The majority of students come from
outside California.  Even those whose parents live in the Los Angeles
area are expected to reside on-campus, or in student apartments located
within a few blocks of the campus.  One guy I knew lived on-campus even
though his parents' spacious house was less than a mile away.  In fact,
during Bob's first year at CalTech, he would have had to petition the
authorities if he wanted to get permission to live off-campus at all,
even in a nearby student apartment.  The cost of room and board is
considered part of the cost of attending CalTech.  Students whose
parents could not afford the whole package usually received some sort of
financial aid from the school (which was quite generous in this
regard);  I never personally knew of any CalTech student who had to drop
out because his parents couldn't afford to pay for his room and board.
And, although quite a few students essentially flunked out and
subsequently transferred to other schools, I never knew of a student in
good academic standing who transferred elsewhere simply because his
parents had moved away from Los Angeles.  However, I won't rule out the
possibility that this might have happened in Bob's case.  It would just
be extremely unusual.

The most interesting claim is that Bob's records at CalTech have been
deleted.  If so, there would now be an unassigned student ID number.
The ID numbers were generated in a very simple fashion.  Members of each
new entering class (including the very few students who transferred in
from other schools, as Bob might have done) were arranged in
alphabetical order.  Each was issued a permanent 5-digit ID number.  The
first two digits represented the year of matriculation, while the last
three indicated the student's place in the alphabetical lineup; three
digits were sufficient for the latter purpose, as there were never more
than a few hundred students admitted in any given year.  Thus, for
example, a student admitted in 1978 whose last name was "Aaronson" would
probably be student number 78001.  Bob Lazar should be able to remember
his own student number and tell it to us.  It should then be a simple
matter to go to the Registrar's office and look up that number.  If the
Feds have monkeyed with his records (which would be quite a feat in and
of itself, as CalTech's recordkeeping system was highly decentralized
until just this year and was probably still largely uncomputerized when
Bob might have been there), that ID number would have lots of white-out
next to it.  If, somehow, the Feds had managed to cleanly insert a fake
name on all of the different records that bear Bob's student number, we
would nonetheless at least have a starting point for an interesting
(though probably quite simple) investigation.

Then there's the issue of student yearbooks, which has been mentioned by
other investigators.  The fact that nobody has found Bob Lazar in a
CalTech yearbook is significant, but not necessarily as significant as
people might think.  Only seniors were permitted to have their own
individual pictures published in the yearbook.  Some (including myself)
missed the deadline for submitting photos their senior year.  However,
each class from a given student house would have a group picture in each
yearbook.  Bob might have been absent each year when such pictures were
taken, although this would have been somewhat unusual.  If he was at
CalTech, there would be a pretty good (though certainly not 100%)
probability that he'd be in one of these pictures, although, admittedly,
such group photos were sometimes a bit grainy and Bob might have looked
quite different back then (as did I), with big hair and everything.  My
4 yearbooks are currently in storage in another state, but the next time
I'm there I will look through them (unless, of course, Federal agents
have broken in and removed them).

Finally, the BIG TEST:  CalTech had a very unusual undergraduate student
culture.  Student life there was, in many ways, vastly different from
student life at other universities (although the most recent
administration tried to make it more "mainstream" beginning in the late
1980s).  I can think of numerous questions about student life which
anyone who was a CalTech undergraduate in the 1970s or early 1980s
should be able to answer right off the top of his head, but which would
totally stump anyone else.  I won't pose any specific questions in this
forum, because that would enable a possible imposter to do some
reasearch off-line and come back with the correct answers.  If Bob Lazar
really attended CalTech, he ought to be willing to sit down in a room
with one or more verified CalTech alumni, a video camera, and some
witnesses.  A simple five-minute interview might well clear the air on
this matter once and for all.



Index: Bob Lazar