Senate Honorary Pages present the colors during a mid-February Senate session. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
No one would describe the Oregon Senate, with an average age of 61, as having a particularly youthful energy. But now, middle and high schoolers are helping the Senate start its day.
The colors ceremony, in which people carry and present the American and state flags ahead of the Pledge of Allegiance, is one of many opportunities for the Senate’s honorary pages. After a years-long hiatus because of the COVID pandemic and Capitol construction, the program, which returned last year and is seeing more participation this year, lets middle and high school students across Oregon take a peek inside the state Legislature.
Misty McCord, Senate page coordinator and assistant sergeant at arms, was hired to help bring back the program that shuttered in 2020. She was excited to see the program’s growth in the past two years.
“When we relaunched [during the long session] I had 72 students serve as pages,” McCord said. “This session, my goal was at least half that number, and I met that before session even started.” As of the end of the second week of the legislative session, there were around 50 pages scheduled, with more applicant submissions since.
Apply to be a House or Senate page
For students interested in becoming a House Honorary Page, open to students 13-17, click here.
For students interested in being a Senate Honorary Page, open to students 12 and above, click here.
The one-day program lets up to six students a day onto the Senate floor, usually restricted to senators and staff. There, they carry out responsibilities including transporting memos to senators’ desks and managing who can come into the chamber, while learning the process of how a bill becomes a law. Students also meet their senators.
Afterward, pages tour the rest of the Capitol and the Oregon Supreme Court building. Along the way, tours are laced with additional anecdotes from McCord about the history of the buildings, from the remnants of the state’s second capitol building — which burned down in 1935 — to the placement of the leftover marble facing that makes up the Capitol exterior. The pages were then shocked to hear that the area of choice was on the ceiling of one of the hallways in the Supreme Court Library.
Elliana Crouch and Hunter Hurl, high school juniors from Wilsonville and Newberg, respectively, carried the Oregon and American flags through the Senate to prepare for the pledge of allegiance as Senate pages in mid-February. While they had some time to rehearse, the teens said they felt some nerves and excitement.
“It was kind of scary doing that in front of all of these adults, but it was really fun, and I felt honored that I was able to do it,” said Crouch, who carried the Oregon state flag.
Across the Capitol, the House honorary page program also saw increased student participation. Approximately 70 students became pages over the course of the six-month 2025 long session. The same number of pages have been scheduled during the current short session, with applications still open for more potential students.
“I believe we’re having as many, if not more students come through the honorary page program than we did in a long session last year, six months versus 6 weeks,” said House Chief Clerk Timothy Sekerak.
The House page program runs a similar program for students, where pages are first sworn in on the dais to serve as an honorary page, then get educational materials outlining how a bill becomes a law. After attending the floor session, pages get to meet their representatives, occasionally even the secretary of state or the governor, and tour the remodeled capitol.
Jack Edwards, House reading clerk and coordinator for the House page program, said he hopes the program can showcase all the roles involved within the legislative process.
“The goal is that the kids engage in the Legislature and know that it’s available to them,” Edwards said. “Whether it [is] being a member, being a staffer, being in the media, custodial staff, security. There’s so many different parts that make a legislature work too that there’s different avenues that they can go in.”
Students including Senate honorary page Chloe Zhang, a Sherwood sophomore, left the day with increased knowledge of the legislative process.
“I’ve been in the Capitol building a couple times before but this was probably the first time I’ve done it with an actual understanding of what’s going on around me,” Zhang said.
Reflecting back and looking forward
While there isn’t an exact date for when the first page program first started, Secretary of the Senate Obie Rutledge notes that earliest records of the program go back over 100 years ago.
Some alumni from the page program later became involved in the state legislature in the future, including former Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, who was a page in the 1960s.
Several former pages from more recent years now work in the Legislature, including. Antonio Martinez, current legislative assistant for Senator Deb Patterson, D-Salem. Martinez was in 8th grade and unsure what he wanted to do in the future when he took part in the program in 2015, and he said the experience “definitely sparked the fire for a career in government.”
Looking toward future sessions, Rutledge wants to create a more immersive experience for older students with a week-long program, to coincide with the day-long program for younger students.
It would require more planning and resources, including legislative staff to coordinate the program. Rutledge is looking at “gold standard programs” to consider emulating from Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Sekerak is particularly interested in Washington’s student engagement program, noting its proximity to Oregon and the opportunities they provide. According to Washington’s page program website, the Washington program hosts students for a week to get a more immersive look at the legislative process, and provides a small stipend to participants.
Oregon still has a ways to go before reaching the level of these other programs, Sekerak said. Despite that, he emphasized the importance of a youth engagement program.
“I hope and believe that exposure at an early age sort of sets a tone for them that they can be an active part in democracy as opposed to a spectator,” Sekerak said.
Rutledge agreed.
“I think that there’s probably no better forum to have a civics program,” Rutledge concluded. “We believe that it allows students to not only better understand how their government works, but in the most exciting examples, decide that they want to be future leaders.”
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