On Thursday, November 8, the staff of The Elephant In The Room were given an opportunity unlike any other: covering Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech in Boston.

It all started with an email from Headliners in Education containing upcoming journalistic opportunities sent to our club advisor Mr. Young. Among those opportunities, it offered the ability for local high schoolers to cover Vice President Kamala Harris’s moderated discussion with members of registered apprenticeship programs on Thursday, November 9.

Being able to see our Vice President in person was something that we (Griffin Angus, Isabella Murphy, Jackie Segall, and Leo Waldbaum) could not pass up.

We signed up and hoped that we’d be selected to go. Luckily, later that night, we all received an invite and instructions allowing us to cover the event.

The morning of the field trip, we checked in with the front office and Mr. Young, we picked up a camera from Mr. LoPresti and went to first period. At 8:20, we left our classes and changed into our business attire because we didn’t want to go to class looking ready to give a business pitch. We headed to the venue.

After a brief phone call with Anton Derevyanko, one of Kamala Harris’s press relation officials, on the logistics of arrival, we found out that they were the ones who would provide us with press passes.

Upon arrival, we were immediately situated outside of a parking lot full of Secret Service agents. Every time a car pulled up a Secret Service agent brought a dog to sniff around the car.

We entered the building and went through security. After that, we headed to another table where they checked us in and gave us our press passes.

Once inside we had no idea what to expect, who was going to be there, or what it was going to be like. Surprisingly, we learned that we were the only high schoolers there. Nonetheless, we started to go up to people and ask questions to try and gather a story.

The first person we talked to was Marquis, an apprentice who gave us insight into what it was like to learn a trade and be a part of a union.

This geared us into formulating a few different questions. Why did Kamala choose this school to talk at? What were the roles of the people here? Why weren’t unions and tradeship schools a popularized option when thinking about future paths after high school?

After waiting for two hours, we were the first to be ushered by Derevyanko into the conference room. There we found a paper with Elephant in the Room written on it set up on a table in the back.

We were situated next to reporters from the National Public Radio (NPR), the Boston University newspaper, and Channel 7 News.

We waited for about an hour for the Vice President to enter, during that time Leo befriended and talked to New England’s most traveled reporter Dan Hausle of 7 News Boston.

While Leo was talking to Hausle, Bella and Jackie were trying to get him to plug the Elephant In The Room. Leo was too distracted to notice those attempts. It took Bella to walk to Hausle and hand him one of our newspapers to do the trick.

Then Vice President Kamala Harris was introduced, the national anthem came on and Vice President Kamala Harris came on stage.

Vice President Harris spoke with impressive gravitas, she talked about the importance of apprenticeship jobs and establishing unions.

She said: “The measure of strength is not how many people you beat down but how many people you build up.”

The talk went on for the better part of an hour; the Vice President left amid a wave of applause. After the speech, we left.