With the school’s officials reluctant to talk, unease about Penn’s Trump connection has revealed itself in limited but telling glimpses. Shortly before the Republican National Convention in 2016, nearly 4,000 Wharton students, graduates, and relatives signed a petition telling Trump, “You do not represent us.” And The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper, published a slide late last year that it said the student group responsible for giving tours had used in order to advise guides about navigating potentially fraught interactions with prospective students. The slide, titled “Trump Reminder,” anticipated eventualities such as “Visitor asks about his views” and “Visitor pushes further.” (A student tour guide I talked to told me that visitors had asked questions about Trump before, but that he hadn’t heard of any of those conversations turning sour.)

When I reached out to Penn, the school declined to discuss Trump. (Wharton, one of Penn’s four undergraduate schools, and the one from which Trump graduated, did the same.) “We just don’t comment on individual politicians,” Stephen MacCarthy, Penn’s vice president of university communications, wrote to me in an email. “We are non-partisan, and try to limit any comments in the political sphere to specific issues that have an impact on the University.” That said, in the past, Penn hasn’t hesitated to wade into presidential politics at its graduations. Gerald Ford and Joe Biden both delivered commencement speeches while in office, and Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton did while their husbands were. Penn officials declined my request to speak with someone about how the school chooses commencement speakers and honorary-degree recipients. The White House didn’t respond to an interview request.

I’m not the only journalist who’s had trouble getting an official comment. Dan Spinelli, who reported on Penn and Trump for The Daily Pennsylvanian, told me about his struggle to get officials to talk on the record. (I went to Penn too, and worked for a magazine that was part of that newspaper.) Spinelli wrote a piece in Politico magazine that described, among other things, an email that administrators sent to Wharton faculty, asking them not to speak to any reporters who wanted to discuss Trump.

Penn’s silence on its most powerful alumnus stands in contrast with how other universities have related to their own presidential (or near-presidential) graduates. George W. Bush was invited to give Yale’s commencement address just months into his first term. And Columbia, the alma mater of Trump’s predecessor, features on its website a giddy post titled “Our Top 10 Obama Highlights.” (“3. Any moment Obama displayed the incredible partnership, respect, and love he has with and for First Lady Michelle Obama.”) And then there is Wellesley’s warm embrace of Hillary Clinton, class of 1969. She spoke at commencement last year, and a page on the school’s website is dedicated to her time at the school.