The B-minus in torts that was recorded by Elena Kagan during her first semester at Harvard Law School — it was covered in the New York Times today in a nifty dispatch by Charlie Savage and Lisa Faye Petak — reminds us of what we consider one of the great un-gotten stories of the Obama presidency. Namely, his transcript, and other particulars, in respect of his undergraduate years at Columbia University. The University stonewalls all requests for information, citing a federal law that makes it a crime to disclose such data. And no one has successfully pressed the president, at a press conference or private interview so far as we’re aware, about a waiver in respect of his Columbia transcript. It remains a mystery.

It seems that we know about General Kagan’s “jarringly mediocre” General Kagan’s grades, as the Times characterized her performance that first semester, because she submitted the transcript in connection with her application to be a clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall. Reports the Timesa: “ . . . a transcript she submitted with her application to Justice Marshall, which is included with his papers at the Library of Congress, shows she earned A’s in 17 of the 21 courses for which she received a letter grade. In two more — including an administrative law course, a field in which she would later focus as a scholar — she earned a B-plus.”

The Times quotes what it says are “several recommndation letters from her professors,” including one from Frank I. Michelman, who, as the Times put it, “urged Justice Marshall not to be dissuaded from taking her on because of those lower marks. He noted that he had taught Ms. Kagan during her first term at law school — a full-year course in property law that did not give grades until the end of the spring term. He gave her an A for the entire year’s work.” It quoted Mr. Michelman as writing: “There’s just no doubt that her first-year spring term grades (including those in the ‘year’ courses), not the fall term ones, are the true reflection of her capacity and her learning.”

It’s not a huge deal. But it’s not nothing. It gives the American people a more granular feel for the individual they are considering taking on to be an associate justice. It strikes us as in the public interest for the information to be out there. I reminds of of this: Why wouldn’t it also be in the public interest for the information to be out there in respect of the president in his own performance at university, in the instance, Columbia? He has so far spurned requests, from the Times and others, to release his Columbia records. One can say that the voters dispensed with all that in the 2008 election. On the other hand, there’s another election yet, and such questions as there are may linger, or grow. All the president would have to do is provide a waiver enabling Columbia to make this information public. And his failure to do so can only stoke the impression that either he or Columbia has something to hide.