Has ex-head boy at elite school wooed Obama’s girl at Harvard?
BARACK Obama’s blood pressure probably leapt a few pips when a video of his daughter kissing a young man at college popped up in the US.
But if reports are confirmed, at least the former US President will find comfort in the fact that the young suitor concerned is of impeccable character – as a former head boy of elite Rugby School.
Suffolk teenager Rory Farquharson is said to be the student caught locking lips with Malia Obama last weekend at Harvard.
The 19-year-old was described as ‘quite a catch’ at Rugby before he moved to study at the Ivy League university last year.
The pair were seen kissing ahead of the annual Harvard vs Yale American football game on Saturday, DailyMail.com reported.
A video shows 19-year-old Malia – who took a gap year before starting at Harvard this autumn – reaching up to put her arms around a young man before going in for a kiss.
Mr Farquharson had posted a picture of himself at the university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last year with the caption: ‘So it begins.’
The teenager was head boy at Rugby for the school year 2015-2016.
The position, usually picked by the school principal, is to provide a link between teachers and students and usually goes to the most outstanding student – both academically and socially – of the year. One insider told the DailyMail.com that the girls all thought he was ‘quite a catch’, adding: ‘He was very popular.’
Mr Farquharson – whose family home is a £1.3million property near Ipswich – played rugby and represented the school at golf. He was also a member of the Blue Bunsen Society chemistry club.
He spent the summer as an intern with the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building in Northern Ireland. But according to his Twitter account, he seems interested in following in the banking footsteps of his father Charles Farquharson who is a chief executive and director of an investment fund management group in London.
Rugby is one of the top public schools in the country and charges more than £11,500 a term for tuition and board. It was also the setting for Thomas Hughes’s novel Tom Brown’s School Days. Last year Mr Obama revealed Malia and his younger daughter Sasha had already started dating and that he was ‘pretty relaxed’ about it since his wife had set ‘such a great example’ – and joking that they also had Secret Service protection.
He said: ‘(Michelle) is such a great example of how she carries herself, her self-esteem not depending on boys to validate how you look or you know, not letting yourself be judged by anything other than your character and intelligence.
‘And hopefully I’ve been a good example in terms of how I’ve shown respect to my wife.’ And he joked: ‘The other reason is because they have Secret Service. There’s only so much these guys can do.’
As a student at Harvard, Malia will be studying a wide range of subjects at the £49,000-a-year college, before deciding what to specialise or ‘major’ in. Her parents both attended Harvard Law School.
However, the teenager is not so ambitious that she doesn’t know how to have a good time.
In the summer of 2016 she was photographed smoking what appeared to be a joint at Lollapalooza festival in Chicago.
The Farquharson family, who also have a home in Islington, did not comment last night.