Students at Ole Miss vote to remove Confederate statue from center of campus

In a unanimous vote Tuesday night, the University of Mississippi student government passed a resolution to move a statue honoring Confederate soldiers from the middle of campus.

The resolution was passed 47-0 and is now being circulated among university administrators. The United Daughters of the Confederacy donated the statue to the school in 1906, and the resolution calls for it to be moved to a cemetery on campus where Confederate soldiers are buried. Over the last several months, several Ole Miss students worked together to come up with the bill and get buy-in from campus organizations. The vote came about two weeks after pro-Confederate groups held a rally at Ole Miss. 


Senior Dalton Hull, chair of the Ole Miss College Republicans and a co-sponsor of the resolution, told NBC News his organization was basically split on the statue's fate. "It was a multicultural, bipartisan resolution that I think really supersedes all political issues," he said. "To me, this is not a political issue: This is about what's morally right and wrong."

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Junior Leah Davis, who helped write the resolution, said she started crying when she knew the bill would pass. "It was really powerful to me the fact that the senate voted unanimously," she said.