13.4.09

Paging in Olympia

This past week I had the honor of paging, at our State Capitol. I was sponsored by Sen. Don Benton who my sibling and I campaigned for in November. The week was long and hard but definitely worth it. My days started at 5:00 am to get dressed, eat breakfast, read my devotions etc. And then at 7:00 my friend Devin Reilly, who was also paging, picked me up and headed to Olympia. Our work started at 8:00 at one of the four stations assigned to us, where we would deliver messages from one office to another, grab supplies for someone, or just sit and wait for a call. I would say that being on the senate floor was my favorite spot. You were able to watch politics in action, plus you were pretty busy delivering messages to the Senators from people on the outside.

For two hours every day we had page school. It was a program that helped us understand how our government works. During the week they had us do research and write up a bill. I teamed up with Devin, and we did a bill on the luxurious state of our jail system and how the inmates aren't being punished. If you want to hear more about the bill just make a comment. On Friday we had a mock legislature hearing in one of the committee rooms. That was a lot of fun and our bill passed with a vote of 2 nays and 3 ayes.

On Thursday, the Christian Homeschool Network (CHN) had their annual Day at the Capitol. I was able to on the floor while the senate passed the homeschool resolution, and it was great to see over 400 homeschoolers in the gallery's. Here is a video of the Homeschool resolution being passed, and you can see me behind the Senator. I am sitting down in the right corner wearing a Burgundy jacket. You can watch from the beginning, but I don't came in until 00:07:00



It was a tremendous experience and would highly recommend anyone to do it!!!

3 comments:

Stephen Bittner said...

Congratulations on entering the prestigious ranks of Senate Page alumni! You were probably able to witness at that time the lack of professionalism of the house pages - long live the redcoats!

David said...

Yeah, the Senate pages are far supurior to the House : )!!Actually, a couple House pages had a bill that would require the teaching of evolution in public schools, it was quite interesting. I was also taught the "offical" page pose, Remember?

Stephen Bittner said...

Actually, I do quite precisely remember the official page pose - matter of fact, when I was there a few months ago and went and stood in front of the guy that does it and did my pose, he gave me a piece of candy for remembering! =D

Good times.