Former Page Recalls Her Experience; Praises Program
- Photos by Jill Connor
Portraits of Class’s Profile subjects: Kaitlyn Funk(cq), a page appointed by Rep. Jeb Bradley (cq) (R-1st NH) for the 2004 summer session, visits her former work place. Kaitlyn, a George Washington University student from Manchester, New Hampshire, thought it was a “great experience” and occasionally comes back to Capitol Hill to have lunch with other former pages.
NHPage
New Hampshire Union Leader
Kendra Gilbert
Boston University Washington News Service
11-2-06
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 – For one summer month between her junior and senior years at Trinity High School in Manchester, Kaitlyn Funk was a congressional page.
Now a sophomore at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., studying philosophy, she has nothing but good things to say about the previously low-profile program, which has now become synonymous with sex and scandal.
“It was a phenomenal opportunity to work on the floor and help representatives,” said Funk, whose father encouraged her to apply.
The page program allows high school students to come to Washington for a semester or one of two summer sessions and assist members of Congress by running messages and answering phones, among other things. Each page is sponsored by a representative or senator.
Funk was sponsored by New Hampshire Republican Rep. Jeb Bradley.
“We think the page program is extraordinary, as it allows students to learn about the legislative process firsthand,” said Salley Collins, press secretary for the Committee on House Administration.
Funk, now 19, agrees, often using the word “cool” to describe her experiences on Capitol Hill.
As a page, Funk witnessed the House vote on the controversial Defense of Marriage Act.
“It was cool,” she said about being on the floor for the vote. “My parents were watching it on TV and I was there. I got to see it happen.”
Not only does the program give high school students a close-up view of Congress, but it also allows them to explore a new city and meet new people.
The program gave Funk a freedom not usually experienced by a 16-year-old, and when she moved back home that August, she joked, she was “hard to live with.”
“It was an adjustment coming home,” she said. “I had tasted independence.”
Going into her senior year at Trinity, Funk said she felt more prepared because of her experience in Washington.
Funk’s U.S. history teacher Marigrace O’Gorski said that Funk was a “very enthusiastic student who was always participating.”
While in Washington, Funk bonded with other pages and counts many of them, including her current college roommate, as her friends today.
“When we were out of work, we could go anywhere in the city,” Funk said. “We had the Metro, we had money and we had each other.”
According to Collins, the pages are under constant supervision while they are in the dorm where they live and while they are at work. If they going out they are required to use the buddy system and they have to sign in and out of the dorm.
Funk said she believes the bond among pages is so strong because other high schoolers cannot relate to the experience.
“It’s an experience that no one else can understand,” Funk said. People would ask her where she was all summer, and she would tell them she was working on the floor of Congress and they wouldn’t understand how momentous that was, she said.
Funk has strong opinions on the Mark Foley scandal, which involved a House member having inappropriate email conversations with former pages, but she insisted that the program was safe and that she never heard anything about inappropriate e-mails or instant messages while she was a page.
“There was never any talk and nothing ever happened that would lead me to believe that there were inappropriate relationships going on,” Funk said.
While pages frequently run messages between members and their offices, Funk said, they never really have much interaction with the members themselves, except on the floor.
However, after the scandal broke, she said, two of her male friends who were also former pages told her they had received e-mails from Foley.
Despite the recent scandal and the whirlwind of rumors about getting rid of the program, Funk can’t say enough good things about it.
“I always talk it up,” she said. “Even if you’re really not that interested in politics, I think that as a citizen of the United States, it’s a great opportunity.”
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