THE DALLES — The Dalles High School Senior Rafael Camacho got an early Christmas present on Dec. 15 when he learned he’d been accepted to Dartmouth, an Ivy League college, on a near full-ride.
Camacho has been building an Ivy-worthy resume throughout high school. He’s a member of National Honor Society with a 3.9 GPA, he’s in Key Club and the Juntos Club, and he’s the student body representative to the school board.
But the real feather in his cap came when he got to be a Senate page this past summer in Washington D.C. for Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley.
He was there July 7 through Aug. 31. His fellow pages were “extremely well connected,” including one who was a senator’s son. “They’re very serious kids, very aspirational kids. They were not there to mess around,” he said. “It was quite a culture shock being there.”
In his time there, “I don’t think I had a single bad experience with a senator, they were all very nice. The thing is some of them didn’t interact with us at all, but some of them really interacted with us, you could just tell they really loved their pages,” he said.
“Just being on the Senate floor was a pretty wild experience for a high schooler. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever top something like that again,” Camacho said.
They were given suits to wear, and trained to be extremely respectful, not get in the way, and not start conversations with senators. They couldn’t wear cologne and had to forego cell phones and internet access for the duration of their stay.
Pages have varied duties, including delivering vote sheets, refilling water, setting up and taking down lecterns for speaking senators, and opening and closing doors for senators, Camacho said.
The Senate chamber itself is surprisingly small — he compared it to maybe the size of the high school auditorium — but it was a surreal moment to actually be on the blue carpeted Senate floor.
At various points he stood just a foot away from Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — who still uses a flip phone, the first one Camacho had ever seen — and just 10 feet from Sen. Majority Leader John Thune.
He was also there when Vice President JD Vance appeared to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
“One thing that is pretty strange is how senators interact with each other when they’re not speaking to the camera,” he said. “They do not hate each other at all. If you see them off camera, they’re very talkative with each other, they joke around a lot.”
Once he brought water for Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey. “He says to me, ‘You know what I heard one time? You always tip your waiter.’ So he opens his desk and he gives me a bag of M&Ms.” Camacho ate the candy and kept the wrapper as a memento.
“He’s just the best with pages,” he said.
Camacho witnessed events that will end up in history books. He saw speeches on the Epstein Files and once worked until 3 a.m. as senators battled over the rescission bill, which was an effort by the Trump administration to remove funds that were approved by Congress in the federal budget bill.
In high school, Camacho developed an interest in politics, and finally emailed Merkley asking if he had jobs for high school kids in his office. Merkley didn’t, but directed him to the page program. He met twice with Merkley in D.C., saying he was friendly and down to earth.
Camacho said politics was “a little passion of mine” — but one that none of his friends share — and he’d reached a point where he didn’t just want to read about it online.
“I kind of want to be active in it,” he said.
As for his career path, he’s not sure yet. Law school is enticing, but expensive. “I have the next four years to figure that out,” he said.
He plans on majoring in government and minoring in economics. His favorite subjects are history and math. Least favorite are English and science. Unsurprisingly, he loaded up on AP classes, taking six of them.
He’s only received three B-pluses in high school — “I do remember every single one” — in Spanish, construction and pre-calculus, but he redeemed himself with his A in calculus.
He also can’t take his foot off the gas academically now that he’s been accepted to Dartmouth.
He was told by the school, “We expect you to continue the level of scholarship and excellence you demonstrated in your application throughout the rest of the year.”
“I’ll try not to let senioritis hit me,” he said.
Camacho credited his mom with motivating him to achieve so much: “She’s been a very big inspiration for me. I just feel obligated to do something to make her proud.”
Mission accomplished.
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