In 1984, Vice President Kamala Harris, then a Howard University student, scored an internship during her sophomore year for Alan Cranston, a Democrat who represented California in the Senate for over two decades. Harris thinks back fondly of her time in Cranston’s office.

“I loved going to work — it felt like the epicenter of change, even as an intern sorting mail,” Harris, who graduated from Howard in 1986, once said — later touting how she “believed the Senate was a place to turn activism into action.”