The student senate at Ole Miss voted Tuesday to remove the Mississippi state flag from the university grounds, saying the portion of the banner that features the Confederate battle flag is racist.
"The Confederate emblem that's on the state flag is deeply connected and rooted in ideas of white supremacy and racial oppression, and that symbol has no place on our campus," Allen Coon, the student senator who wrote the resolution,
told The Associated Press after the vote. "If we claim to respect the dignity of each person, that flag cannot fly on our campus."
USA Today reported that the vote comes just days after the student chapter of the NAACP on the Oxford campus staged a rally where over 200 people protested the flying of the flag.
Non-students from the International Keystone Knights, a Ku Klux Klan affiliate, and the League of the South, staged a counter protest that same day, leading to some heated exchanges.
John Brahan, vice president of the Associated student Body Senate, said the presence of the white supremacists likely convinced many student senators to vote in favor of removing the state flag.
The flag-flying authority falls to the University Chancellor, and Interim Chancellor Morris Stocks has previously shown support for a new state flag. He said he will hold discussions with his leadership team before making any decisions on the flag.
In 2003, Colonel Reb was retired as the mascot for the university's sports teams, and Rebel Black Bear was selected in 2010. The school's athletic teams are still called the Rebels.
Mississippi voters voted in 2001 to keep the state flag.
Jackson State University, Mississippi Valley State University, and Alcorn State University have all stopped flying it.
South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from state grounds earlier this year in the wake of a deadly shooting at a historically black church.
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