PARIS — Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School junior Adam Nolan loves a good debate.

In a few weeks, Nolan, a Paris resident, leaves for Washington, D.C., where he will work as a page for six months on the United States Senate floor — the site of some of the greatest debates in the country’s history.

Nolan is one of 38 students selected nationwide to be pages on the Senate floor from January through early June. He was notified of the appointment last week by Kathy Sorensen, director of administration for Sen. Susan Collins, about a week ago.

“To get a chance to work in the Senate . . . it was just thrilling,” Nolan, who has always had a keen interest in history and politics, said after receiving the news.

Male pages have worked on the floor of the U.S. Senate for about 150 years since the first appointment was made by Massachusetts Sen. Daniel Webster, a leading 19th-century statesman who served 40 years in national politics, including 19 years in the U.S. Senate. He also served as Fryeburg Academy’s headmaster in 1802. Female pages were not appointed until 1971.

Debating has always been a part of Nolan.

“If you ask my mom she’d probably say I was hard to discipline. She’d always thought I was a good debater. My grandma said I’d be a good lawyer. It must have started then,” he said of his interest in debating when he was in first grade and before.

Nolan said debating requires listening.

“I think it has to be not being afraid to express your point of view. You also have to be a good listener,” said Nolan, when asked what makes a good debater. “There’s no point to it if you can’t listen (to the other person’s point of view).”

Nolan said his mother, a teacher at Rowe Elementary School, is his inspiration for a good debater.

“When you’re a kid and you’re being scolded for something wrong and you’re trying to say it’s not my fault or it’s my brother’s fault, she can turn what you say against you. I don’t know how she does it. But she’s always right and makes you believe it,” he said.

Nolan has had his share of debating, whether it’s arguing a point of view in his current history class where he is studying the pre-Civil War era, or in an English literature class. The first debate he recalls participating in was in the eighth-grade, when he took up the cause of then-presidential candidate John McCain against his opponent, who debated the merits of Barack Obama.

“We didn’t declare a winner but I’m pretty sure I did well,” said Nolan, who is active in the high school band and DECA, a high school program for students interested in future marketing, management and entrepreneurial jobs.

Nolan, who has a sister, two brothers and a stepsister, will drive with his gear and family to Washington, D.C., in January. Once there he will live in a dorm with other male pages and attend school in the morning at the U.S. Senate Page School before going on the Senate floor in the afternoons.

The District of Columbia public school took responsibility for educating pages until 1946, when a Page School was established by Congress. In July 1995 the Senate Page School became an independent school and was relocated from the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress to the lower level of the Daniel Webster Senate Page Residence.

Nolan’s duties as a page include helping ensure the Senators are prepared to work by making sure their work space is ready, delivering messages and copies of legislation, making sure the senators have a glass of water at hand or whatever is necessary. Pages receive a modest salary and are provided room and board.

Although he has been to the U.S. Capitol building he has never seen the Senate in action.

“I’m extremely excited. I can’t wait to experience it,” he said.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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