'It's a place where fun and politics come together'

Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of profiles of the Boys Nation 2016 officers. Boys Nation 2017 takes place July 21-29 at Marymount University in Arlington, Va.

While his experience on his school’s debate team prompted Pranoy Behera to at least pay some attention to politics, he acknowledges he’s more active politically after his experience at Boys Nation 2016.

Behera, of Bartlesville, Okla., served as secretary of the senate at last year’s Boys Nation. He was also city clerk, state tax commissioner and speaker of the House at Oklahoma Boys State.

Behera said he approached Boys State and Boys Nation with the same thought process: run for any office you can.

“At Boys State, that was a good strategy because there were at least 20 offices you could run for,” Behera said. “At Boys Nation, there’s four, and I’m already prohibited from running for two of them (president and vice president) because I’m not a natural born citizen.”

The first election was for president pro tempore, won by Connecticut’s Aaron Jaffe. Behera then pursued the secretary position — “I figured if I strategically campaigned, I might have a chance to win this election.”

As secretary, Behera was responsible for tracking all legislation and information that came before the senate. Considering the 2016 assembly passed a Boys Nation-record 44 bills and resolutions, that meant a lot of work for Behera.

But he was prepared for that challenge as well as the adjustment to being at Boys Nation with 97 of the nation’s brightest young men. Oklahoma Boys State Director Clay Ballenger, who also serves as a senior counselor at Boys Nation, told Behera and fellow Oklahoman Tucker Wilkie what to expect.

“He said kids there are going to be talented, they’re going to be well-spoken, they’re going to be articulate, and they’re going to be well ahead of the other boys you saw at Boys State. So it’s definitely going to be a shift from what you would imagine,” Behera said. “It was a huge adjustment at first, to try to think like they were thinking, to try to parallel our interests, our intellectual interests. … It was tough at first, but after the first or second day, it was smooth.”

Behera sees that challenge as a selling point for the Boys State and Boys Nation programs.

“Boys State and Boys Nation are where you can make peers that will last a lifetime. Often times you’ll see kids in my school or other schools across the state, or even other states, they’ll stay in their little cities and they’ll never get to experience or go out and meet with other people. But Boys State and Boys Nation is where you can sit down and meet peers that will debate with you,” he said. “It’s a place where fun and politics come together.”

Behera plans to attend the University of Oklahoma where he’ll major in engineering with a minor in constitutional studies.