In the Washington Post this week there was an article about two Pages who had oral sex in a public area of the Capital Hill Dormitories. The pages used in political offices are usually juniors in high school. The ones caught in the act were dismissed. However there is criticism that there has been some lax oversight in supervising these pages. Also in 2006, Florida GOP Mark Foley was forced to resign after it was shown that he sent sexually explicit emails to his male pages. In both of these cases there were people who claim to have been unaware but were obviously enablers in both situations.
I believe that in order to solve this problem, high school students should not be allowed to work in government offices. Don’t get me wrong, it is great to be able to do summer internships and learn more about a career as a government official. However, I feel that if sex scandals become an issue among minors, who are involved in the government, something is terribly wrong. People who are not old enough to vote are assisting government officials and acting immaturely in way that reflects on the reputation of the government as a viable source of power. There will always be sex wrapped up in politics, but I think adding teenagers into the mix is just asking for trouble. Although I’m sure the pages who were dismissed are the exception and not the rule when it comes to teen assistants, I feel it is better to let them go completely.
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I think it is extremely unfair to the rest of us teens to be grouped into a category that labels us all as "immature" because of the mistake of two teens. Sex scandals can occur no matter what age (as we have seen in politics in these past few years), so why should only teens have a privilege taken away from them? Allowing teenagers to work with government officials provides a great opportunity for us to have a voice in politics. Many who are under the voting age and cannot partake in politics through voting at least have a shot in making a difference in another more hands-on approach. I do not think we can judge all teens based on one incident. And if you think about it, teens that actually work alongside with politicians are probably very interested in politics, socially aware, and are probably not all immature or unintelligent. Everyone makes mistakes once in a while, so why punish an entire group of people for something only two people (out of the millions of teens in the U.S.) did?
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