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PHOENIX — The high school’s Rose Theater was dimly lit Friday morning, but despite the early hour, students were fully engaged as they had unfettered access to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden for nearly an hour. “This is something I really enjoy,” the Democrat told the students, teachers and a few school administrators. This was Wyden’s third visit to the high school in recent years. “He likes us,” said Craig Pruitt, chairman of the Phoenix-Talent School Board. Wyden seemed equally buoyant after 45 minutes of students’ questions that varied from federal to state to international issues. Some read from sheets of paper while others ad-libbed. Nathaniel Morales, a senior, opened up the questions by asking what Wyden thought of the disappearance and apparent murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “I am extremely skeptical of the idea that the crown prince did not know anything about this at all,” Wyden said. “Not only that he wasn’t involved, but that he really didn’t know anything about it at all. He is very much a hands-on kind of manager, and I’m with Lindsey Graham ... that if what we are hearing about is proven, Saudi Arabia is going to face a very tough array of sanctions.” Morales said he liked Wyden’s answer to his question. “I really wanted to get a voice and opinion from someone of such power, to see what he was doing,” he said. “I think it was a good answer, for him to voice out that he was against it.” Wyden also faced questions from students opposed to the Jordan Cove pipeline project — the first student asked what Wyden had done to protect young people from the effects of climate change, and the second asked what his views on the project are. The senator’s answer echoed others that he gave in the past, including the most recent town hall he held in Medford last fall. He described his resistance to statements made from President Donald Trump’s administration implying the pipeline certainly would go through, despite its two rejections from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “I did tell both sides I’m not going to put my thumb on the scale,” he said. “So I ended up getting a fair amount of flack from just about everybody.” In his response to the climate change question, Wyden also criticized a recent Trump administration proposal to co-locate fossil fuel export operations at West Coast military facilities. Before answering another student’s question about what actions he has taken to keep schools safe from gun violence , Wyden asked the room, “How many of you are really interested in talking about gun violence today?” Across the auditorium, hands went up. In the course of his five-minute, 45-second response, one of the longest in the session, Wyden described a number of actions he favors, calling repeatedly for increased background checks. “We’re just a few votes away, folks, in the United States Senate from being able to pass legislation (on a) nationwide system to ensure that we keep the guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, background checks,” he said. “Now, people will say, there are laws already. That’s true — Oregon has a background check system. But you need a seamless, integrated national system because sometimes somebody from another state comes in with their guns, and they haven’t been subject to the same kind of scrutiny.” Students also asked about wildfires and related topics. Wyden pointed to his legislative efforts to increase federal agency funding to end “fire borrowing,” which is when money for preventive measures is routed instead to cover wildfire fighting cost. He said he wants to increase the availability of supertankers to fight fires. In response to another question, Wyden said that he had pushed unsuccessfully for the Biscuit fire salvage to be a model project, but the George W. Bush administration didn’t pursue the idea. The senator received hearty applause at the end of the event before students hurried off back to class, when he reminded them they are “the faces of democracy.” “What you have done is what the founding fathers wanted us to do,” he said. Reach reporter Kaylee Tornay at [email protected] .