While the #NeverAgain movement—a political campaign around gun control that was spearheaded by Stoneman Douglas students—is nonpartisan, some of its most outspoken activists have been honest about their disdain for Trump and for politicians who take contributions from the NRA, many of whom are Republican or conservative. It’s worth asking whether the students’ movement would have been quite as strong had it bloomed under another administration with a deeper commitment to stricter gun-control legislation—or with higher approval ratings among the American public. Trump has proposed several gun-control measures in response to the shooting, including raising the minimum age for certain firearm purchases and enforcing tighter background checks, but it’s not yet clear whether he will follow through on any specific policy change, and sources suggest he has since backed down from some of these proposals. Trump has also struck a less gun-shy tone tone in other policy proposals, particularly his suggestion of arming teachers as another way to protect schools in the event of a shooting. DeVos, for her part, spoke on Wednesday in general terms about the Trump administration’s dedication to developing bipartisan school-safety solutions.

The backlash to DeVos’s visit raises the question of how the American public expects U.S. education secretaries to respond to school shootings. The education secretary’s role in such situations is a complex one, Maria Voles Ferguson, the executive director of the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University, a pro-public-education think tank, said in an email: “Reacting to localized school shootings from the federal perch is both hard and easy.” Because each state has its own gun laws and school policies, there is a limit to the tangible steps an education secretary can take in response to a shooting. Their role is more symbolic, Ferguson argued: “It is (or should be) a no-brainer for the U.S. Secretary of Education to understand that the most important role they can play in the aftermath of a school shooting is that of education ‘comforter-in-chief.’” The best thing education secretaries can do, Ferguson said, is support local officials in their own strategies and methods for moving forward after a shooting.

But in this less tangible way, education secretaries can have a tremendous impact: “They can use [the bully pulpit] to demonstrate leadership and help explain complicated issues. … They can use it to convene disparate stakeholders to talk about issues regarding school violence, mental illness, and gun safety.” And it’s likely that, given DeVos’s prior statements on guns and the Trump administration’s broader platform, those watching DeVos’s visit were eager to see how she’d use her pulpit—and pessimistic about the focus she’d choose.