Sen. Cardin recalls good old days at Pitt

Correction appended

While most of his peers in the University of Maryland’s law… Correction appended

While most of his peers in the University of Maryland’s law school were hitting the books to cram for the latest exam, Ben Cardin was busy getting elected to Maryland’s House of Delegates.

“That’s how I got my start in politics,” Cardin said. ” I was a congressman before I was a lawyer.”

Back in 1964, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., was just an economics major at the University of Pittsburgh.

During his time on campus, Cardin became the president of both SGB and his fraternity, Pi Lambda Phi. His natural ability to lead perhaps foreshadowed his election to the Senate in 2006.

“I have great memories of being at Pitt,” Cardin said. “I had a great education and a great social life. The friends I made in college are still my friends today.

“Student government and my fraternity were the two main things I was involved in.”

The native Baltimorean said he was drawn to Pitt for its reputation, among other things.

“I had friends going and I’d heard people say great things about it.” Cardin also added that he liked that Pitt was in an urban center, and it was “far enough away from Baltimore to be independent but close enough [for me] to get home if I needed.

“I remember visiting the campus with my older brother, and I fell in love with it,” Cardin said.

Cardin played intramural squash, football and softball during his days at Pitt. He still follows Pitt athletics, he said.

“I must admit that when Pitt plays the University of Maryland that it’s a struggle for me.”

Cardin said he returns to Pittsburgh for periodic fraternity reunions or to visit old friends from college.

He is co-chairman of the Helsinki Commission, which is devoted to protecting people’s religious, political and economic rights across the world.

“[The] Darfur genocide is a high priority for me,” he said. “I will continue to urge our government and the United Nations to increase pressure on Sudan to accept U.N. authorized force.”

Cardin voted for “the safe redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq” in December 2007, according to his website.

But he acknowledged the tenuous situation when he said, “Peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved without the active and sustained diplomatic efforts by the U.S.”

Cardin is an original co-sponsor of the Keep Children Covered Act, introduced in the Senate last year. The bill provides states with funding to support programs that give health insurance to children whose families can’t afford it.

As for the upcoming presidential elections, Cardin said he doesn’t have a preference between his party’s frontrunners.

“I think Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton are both excellent candidates,” he said.

He thinks that in order to get back into the White House, Democrats need to “stick to our beliefs and provide hope for the future.”

Cardin has come a long way since his time at Pitt, but he said he’ll never forget the lessons he learned here.

“Pitt taught me how to live on my own,” he said. “It was my first experience with in-depth academics, and I found I had a real love for government economics. And most of all, it taught me responsibility.”

In the Feb. 1 issue the Pitt News inaccurately reported the legislative career of Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. Cardin was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1967 and served until 1986 when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District.