October 5, 2006
More on Pages Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 10:00 AM EST I’m very happy to second Ellen Feldman’s cautionary tale against the age-old tendency to blame the victim. Already, news organizations have taken to labeling the current controversy surrounding Rep. Mark Foley the “page scandal,” and at least one major publication, The New York Times, has run a column calling for an outright end to the page program. In the same newspaper, legal scholar Jonathan Turley penned an op-ed recounting some sordid stories of booze and pedophilia from his days as a page in 1977 and 1978, and while Turley supports the continuation of the page program, he has subtly contributed to the false but easy to believe notion that there is somehow an inherent problem in allowing 16- and 17-year-old kids to wander the halls of Congress.
I served as a page in 1990 and 1991—some 12 years after Turley served, and roughly 7 years after the House censored Rep. Gerry Studds (D.-Mass.) and Rep. Daniel Crane (R.-Ill.) for initiating sexual relationships with two pages. Importantly, the charges against Studds dated from 1973, and those against Crane from 1980. In the wake of their censure, and well after Turley graduated from high school, the page program was radically restructured. Since then pages have been housed in a high-security dormitory and live under the (very) watchful eye of resident monitors, most of whom are graduate students. Having spent my entire junior year of high school under said surveillance, I can vouch for its stringency. Ironically, I got away with far fewer shenanigans in Washington, living ostensibly free of parental control, than I did in my parents’ house (sorry, Dad . . . the truth must out).
Having e-mailed with dozens of my “dead page” friends, as we took to calling ourselves after leaving the program, and having reunited with over 50 of them at a recent reunion, I can assure readers that nobody in my class can recall even the slightest impropriety. To drive home the point, my two most meaningful interactions with congressmen were an impromptu seminar on nonviolence that former Rep. Ron Dellums (now mayor of Oakland, California) staged for pages in the Democratic cloakroom, amid the debate over the Gulf War, and a similarly informal talk with Rep. John Lewis, about the enduring importance of federal civil rights legislation.
Which is to say, Mark Foley is a sad anomaly. It would be a great shame to see such an important program scrapped because of one bad apple and his protectors. Blame Foley, Hastert, Reynolds, and Boehner. But not the pages.
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