Keep the pages

The buzzword in government this season is “austerity,” a term I associate for some reason with rationed portions of chocolate and eggs, of meat packed into jars, and the invention of spam. But last week as the House reconvened after summer recess, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner pulled what appeared to be the “austerest” move of all: cancelling the House’s page program. I think the program is crucial in that the students it graduates have a clearer vision of the democratic process, allowing them to inform, enrich, and properly disillusion their college communities.

The page program in the House has existed in some form almost since the legislature’s inauguration in 1789 allowing high school students the opportunity to work directly with their representatives. Pages took notes, carried messages, opened doors, fastened overcoats, and awakened napping members of Congress before an important vote. In the U.S. capitol shooting incident of 1954, pages helped rescue several wounded representatives. Congressional shootouts aside, this set of experiences is undoubtedly a formative one. Illustrious graduates of the page program include numerous members of Congress and incidentally, Bill Gates. (The clerk’s office confirmed that pages have attended Columbia, though I couldn’t get them to release the names for my article.)

Long story short, the program costs $5 million in taxpayer dollars. On the other hand, President Obama is hoping to pass a job creation bill worth $447 billion. As far as austerity measures go, $5 million is a drop in the bucket. No rations, no spam. And furthermore, wealthy ex-pages have offered to pitch in to sponsor the program—to no avail. It turns out there is an altogether different reason the program was cancelled, and it has very little to do with budget cuts.

Ex-page and law professor Jonathan Turley offered the explanation on NPR: “Every ten or twenty years, we have some member [of Congress] who tries to molest or proposition a page.” Turley’s statement has never felt truer than now, in the wake of the Mark Foley and Anthony Weiner scandals. In her New York Times op-ed, Maureen Dowd wrote a whimsical farewell to the pre-pedophilic Age of Innocence when 16 to 18 year-olds were safe on the floor of Congress. But she missed the real question: if we can’t trust U.S. Representatives with college- and pre-college-aged kids, how can we trust them to run our country?

The answer is that we can’t, and ironically, that is all the more reason why we need pages in the House. Let me explain. Though I was never a page in Congress, living in Washington D.C. gave me the opportunity to visit the Capitol several times and witness congressional debates in person. If not for that experience, I would be utterly unable to imagine what is going on in government these days. When you read that Congress is in “gridlock,” you (or at least I, past tense) imagine a crowded floor full of representatives locked in heated debate. I envisioned something like the Roman Senate, with everyone fairly old and wise and possibly wearing togas. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

When I visited Congress, if not for the bicamerally huge white building, I would’ve thought I’d gotten off the bus at the wrong stop. An important vote over a tax bill was scheduled for that afternoon, but the floor of the House of Representatives was almost completely empty. A congressman tottered up to the podium and read notes off a piece of paper into the microphone. No one asked him any questions. Another congressman, opposing the bill, took the stage and read his pre-scripted lines. Of the few people in the room, no one seemed to be listening, preparing to respond, or taking notes, except for the lonely stenographer.

The most important part of that day was not that Congress struck me as particularly un-sexy. It was the lingering feeling that the democratic process has decayed. Gone is the era of passionate debate that might change anyone’s mind. That day the representatives were probably in their home states, selling themselves to their constituents for the price of another term—selling themselves as powerful voices in their legislative body. But no one there seemed active or engaged to me—members skipped the debate entirely and cast their votes remotely. And that, I think, is precisely what high school and college kids need to see.

Cancelling the pages program dismisses the last vestige of innocence, of tradition, of the illusion that the House works in the way we imagined. What we need is not an austerity measure, but a healthy dose of disillusionment. Otherwise how can we expect it to change in the future? If Gates or one of his friends will cough up the $5 million, there’s every reason to keep the page program—on the house.

Amanda Gutterman is a Columbia College junior majoring in English. The Far Side of the Familiar runs alternate Wednesdays.