This year, the tennis icon and social-justice pioneer Billie Jean King will address Northwestern’s graduates. King is not a graduate of the university and ostensibly has no personal connection to the school, so the decision to invite her to campus cannot simply be interpreted as a celebration of a noteworthy alumna. Instead, selecting a woman who embodies liberal values (and who happened to have been with Clinton the night she accepted the Democratic nomination for president) seems like an attempt to reassert that Northwestern is an open, left-leaning campus—an image the school’s president, Morton Schapiro, has individually cultivated with his repeated public support for safe spaces and campus activism.

Bringing King to campus squares the university in opposition to Trump’s social platform and perhaps signals to prospective students that Northwestern is proud of and isn’t afraid to reassert its politics—and that it is distinct from its peer institutions for doing so. And even if this thought process did not inform those who made the decision to invite King to the Evanston, Illinois, campus, the public perception of such a choice is to connect the school with progressive ideals. And the university reinforced its liberal bent: In an emailed statement, Schapiro noted the barriers King broke for the LGBT community and said that “creating an environment that is truly inclusive—one that goes beyond increasing diversity percentages to trying to make every member of our community feel welcome and thrive—is a central goal at Northwestern.” (To be fair, Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM who graduated from Northwestern in 1979 and currently serves as a business adviser to President Trump, addressed the school’s graduates in 2015.)

Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence will address Notre Dame’s graduating class this spring, a decision that also sends a political message despite the university’s apparent goals. In an emailed statement, Paul Browne, the vice president of public affairs and communications at Notre Dame, said, “Pence's invitation says less about ideology than it does geography and history.” Browne went on to note that despite the idea that the school has a tradition of inviting the president to speak during his first year in office, just six of Notre Dame’s 171 commencement speakers have been presidents.

The Catholic university certainly has a more conservative reputation than, say, the University of California at Berkeley. It is also located in Pence’s home state of Indiana, and University President Father John Jenkins said he considered inviting Trump to South Bend. In many ways, Pence is a safer, less polarizing choice whose accomplishments and status still align with the prestige of Notre Dame.

However, just as with Northwestern’s decision to tap King as speaker, it is foolish to think that in choosing Pence, the powers that be at Notre Dame did not draw a line in the political sand—and perhaps many of its students do not stand on the same side of that line. Following the speaker announcement, a number of student groups at Notre Dame released statements denouncing the pick, and the precincts surrounding campus voted for Clinton in the presidential election, a clear sign that many in the university community oppose the platform of their commencement speaker. Picking someone famous to give a graduation address is far more politicized in today’s environment, and the ruffled feathers at Notre Dame embody that reality.