Ole Miss takes down state flag

The University of Mississippi has taken down the Mississippi state flag.

In a October. 16, 2015 photo, the Mississippi state flag and USA flag fly in the Circle on campus at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.

The university’s decision was prompted by an October 20 vote by the student senate to remove the flag; the faculty senate, the graduate student council, and the staff council soon echoed that sentiment.

Thursday night the Ole Miss Faculty Senate will vote on if the flag stays on campus or is removed.

“I don’t think (students) have any legal authority whatsoever to determine what the state flag is and where it flies, particularly over public buildings”, Bryant said. “Ole Miss Students and my fellow Mississippians, rise up and push back on political correctness and support the state flag”, wrote student senator Andrew Soper in an online petition, according to CNN.

Interim Chancellor Morris Stocks says the university joins other leaders in the state who are calling for a change in the flag.

But as my colleague Tyler Bishop pointed out last week, the most common defense of the Confederate flag-that it’s about “heritage, not hate”-doesnpt “recognize all the rich and varied aspects of Southern heritage that the flag fails to represent”. Sports teams are still called the Rebels, but the university several years ago retired the Colonel Rebel mascot. “But our state flag does not communicate those values”, Stocks added.

Confederate tributes have come under increased scrutiny in the South since the killings of nine African-Americans a Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Mississippi’s Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn was the first ranking republican to make a statement against the flag, followed by U.S. Senators Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran, among many other prominent state and local leaders.

The university’s removal of the flag is the latest development in discussions within the state about whether to change the official state flag, which includes the Confederate battle flag in one corner. The flag has also been removed at a few other Mississippi college campuses. He said that the issue about the Confederate emblem was neither a black nor a white issue but a human issue.

Neither the ASB nor Faculty Senate vote is binding.