Our Journey to Washington, D.C.

The trip to Washington D.C. represents the pinnacle of BLAC’s efforts this year. Its organization has been complicated, but the actual trip is fairly simple.
We leave from Boston at 7:00 a.m. on January 19th. We arrive in Baltimore at the Ramada Inn that afternoon and get settled in our hotel. We then eat. That evening we meet about how the next day is going to go, and how each team of students—led by a chaperone—is going to go about having a good, but safe time at the inauguration. We then go to bed and wake up very early the next morning, possibly at 4:00. The hotel is preparing breakfast for us, and after eating it, we proceed to the inauguration. We get there, secure a spot, take in the atmosphere and wait for it to begin. After the proceedings have finished, we watch the parade, and when that’s done, we get back on the bus and head back to Boston.
There are 32 people going, 24 of which are students. The cost of the bus rides, the breakfast and the hotel is $189 per person. Thus, the total cost of the trip, before food and other incidentals, is $6,048. Several people are paying their own way, and Adam Carpenter, BLAC’s advisor, wrote a PTSO grant that the principal, Jennifer Price, is using to help us defray some of the cost. In addition, students have been working tirelessly to raise money using bake sales and the like to help build up BLAC’s account so it can absorb as much of the cost as possible because many students don’t have the funds to attend the trip. Despite these efforts, we are still in need of money. The fundraising party and the fashion show will help us raise more money in the late Winter and Spring, but this still leaves us with a deficit. The generosity of donors will help ease this burden.
As regards the cost of the trip, several people are paying their own way, and Adam Carpenter, BLAC’s advisor, wrote a PTSO grant that the principal, Jennifer Price, is using to help us defray some of the cost. In addition, students have been working tirelessly to raise money using bake sales and the like to help build up BLAC’s account so it can absorb as much of the cost as possible because many students don’t have the funds to attend the trip. Despite these efforts, we are still in need of money. The BLAC party and the fashion show will help us raise more money in the late Winter and Spring, but this still leaves us with a deficit. The generosity of donors will help ease this burden.
The underlying goal for our fundraising is to leave more than enough money in the account to cover this year’s BLAC scholarship. That way, we can afford to use the account to pay for the trip to the inauguration.