[caption id=”attachment_138326″ align=”aligncenter” width=”2312″] Sergio Martinez, center, with UT Facilities Services, pressure washes a statue of Jefferson Davis to remove graffiti at the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday, June 23, 2015. Cindy Posey, spokeswoman for campus security at UT, says ÂBlack lives matter was scrawled early Tuesday on the base of the statue to the president of the Confederacy, and also on those for Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Albert Johnston. (Dborah Cannon/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
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Calls for the removal of the statue of Jefferson Davis, who served as president of the Confederacy during the Civil War, at the University of Texas at Austin are growing louder in the wake of the Charleston, S.C. tragedy.
The statue, which has been defaced multiple times this year, was spray painted with the words, “Black Lives Matter,” this week.
The UT Austin student government also launched an online petition over the weekend to have the statue of Davis removed.
“Statues serve to glorify and memorialize the values of what the subject stood for. Given Jefferson Davisâ vehement support for the institution of slavery and white supremacy, we believe this statue is not in line with the universityâs core valuesâlearning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility,” the petition reads. “It is impossible to reach the full potential of an inclusive and progressive learning institution while putting an idol of our darkest days on a pedestal.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, the petition had received more than 2,800 signatures, including that of Rep. JoaquÃn Castro (D-Texas), The Texas Tribune reported.
The student body President Xavier Rotnofsky and Vice President Rohit Mandalapu also met with university President Gregory Fenves on Monday to discuss the issue, according to the Huffington Post.
In a statement to HuffPo, Fenves said that he plans to announce a committee “of students, faculty members and alumni that will discuss the future of the Jefferson Davis statue and provide a range of options for me to review.”
The push to remove the statue has been going on long before the Charleston shooting, but the anti-Confederate wave that has swept the country this week has seemingly moved this process along.
