College graduation is typically a time for celebrating accomplishments and preparing for the future, but the commencement ceremony at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Fla. Wednesday turned decidedly political.

Members of the Trump administration in attendance — assistant to the president, Omarosa Manigault and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos — were greeted with loud choruses of boos from graduates and audience members when they were announced by school officials. As DeVos spoke to graduates, delivering her first commencement address in her new role, the booing continued.

It comes as little surprise that DeVos, the most controversial Secretary of Education in recent memory, was met with jeers. When officials at Bethune-Cookman announced they would invite DeVos to give the address, the decision was almost immediately met with protests. The Florida state chapter of the NAACP called on the school’s president, Edison Jackson, and the chairman of the school’s board to resign over the decision to invite her. Tens of thousands of people signed petitions asking the school to withdraw the invitation and protesters gathered outside the event to register their complaints Wednesday.

Some cited what they described as a troubling approach to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) from DeVos and the Trump administration. The president was forced to backtrack earlier this month after he made statements suggesting that a government program to help HBCUs make capital improvements is unconstitutional. DeVos also made headlines earlier this year when she described HBCUs as “real pioneers of school choice,” a statement critics said ignored the historical context in which HBCUs were founded — typically to provide a college education to black students who at the time weren’t allowed into other schools.

At one point the objections from the crowd became so incessant that a school official interrupted DeVos’s speech, chiding graduates that if they continued their behavior, their degrees would be mailed to them. Journalists covering the ceremony also reported that multiple graduates stood with their backs to DeVos throughout much of her speech. Some members of the crowd also walked out during her speech with their fists up in the air, according to reporters on the ground.

DeVos used the speech as an opportunity to reaffirm the Trump administration’s commitment to HBCUs. She cited the administration’s interest in allowing students to use Pell grants — the money the government provides low-income students to attend college — year-round as an example of a way officials are working to make a college degree more attainable. Liz Hill, a Department of Education spokeswoman, said in a statement that the visit was also an effort to engage in “productive dialogue with the students, faculty and staff.”

But it appears the crowd wasn’t buying it. When DeVos told the audience she planned to visit the home and gravesite of the college’s founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, a child of slaves who ultimately rose to become an education and civil rights leader, she was again met with a noise of protest from the crowd.