College students learn lawmaking outside the classroom

LINCOLN – Students experience the lawmaking process from the floor of the Nebraska Legislature and make valuable connections along the way.

The Legislature’s page program selects applicants from among Nebraska’s colleges and trade schools to work during the legislative session beginning in January and ending in June. They can only work for two years.

Pages run errands for senators, copy documents, deliver messages, serve food and drink, set up and staff committee hearings, in addition to other duties. First-year pages earn $9.47 per hour and second-year pages earn $9.85 per hour.

More than the pay, it’s the real-world experience and opportunity to gain important contacts in the legislature that draw students from many different schools and academic backgrounds to the program. This year there are 29 pages from four different schools - Southeast Community College, Wesleyan University, Doane College and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Benjamin Blowers, a 23-year-old student at Southeast Community College in Lincoln, said he became a page to find out if politics is a possible career move or simply a passing interest.  

Blowers is majoring in political science and pre-law and said he’s been interested in the legislative process for a number of years.

Evan Sheaff studies political science and economics at Wesleyan University in Lincoln. Like Blowers, the 19 year old cited the experience as his number one reason for applying to the program.

“It’s very important to study outside the classroom,” Sheaff said. “To witness the legislative process and be a part of it.”

Pages get to see the inner-workings of a lawmaking process that few Americans are familiar with outside of high school civics courses and Schoolhouse Rock songs.

“We get this idea that the senators come in, vote and leave,” Sheaff said. “But a lot of pre-work goes into it. It’s a lot longer of a process than people think.” He said the Legislature’s complex procedure, which outsiders might view as arcane, is really the core of the process.

Blowers said his brief time in the Legislature has completely changed his view of lawmakers. “I viewed senators as distant and unapproachable, but that’s not true” he said. “They’re just regular people.”

Several pages said spending time in the Legislature made them more civically engaged and more attentive to local politics than they were before.

Tobias Grant, a 33-year-old business student at Doane College in Crete, works Natural Resources Committee hearings, making copies of documents brought in by people giving testimony and assisting the committee clerk.

Grant said he’s always hoping to share information, like what a particular bill pertains to and when it’s scheduled to be heard, with people interested in testifying at committee hearings.

Along with a greater appreciation for the legislative process, students involved in the page program gain access to well-connected and influential senators.

“There are a good number of former pages working in Washington,” Blowers said. He said the program allows students to get to know senators on a personal level and make connections that can become valuable recommendations in the future.

“They start to recognize your face after a while,” Sheaff said of the senators.

Senators have request lights at their desks that they use to signal to the pages when they need a refill on their coffee or have a document they’d like copied. The pages, dressed in white collared shirts underneath black vests with black trousers, take turns responding to senators’ requests. They move one by one down a line of chairs at the front of the chamber, returning to the back of the queue after they’ve completed a task.

Occasionally the pages get odd requests from senators.

Joseph Moore, Nebraska News Service

“I was asked to go down and get a bag of M&Ms from a senator’s office once,” Blowers said. “I think it was Karpisek,” he said, referring to Sen. Russ Karpisek of Wilber.

Sheaff said the strangest request he ever got was, “Can you go charge my phone?”