JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — A Confederate monument that’s been a divisive symbol at the University of Mississippi was today removed from a prominent spot on the Oxford campus.

The marble statue of a saluting Confederate soldier will be taken to a Civil War cemetery in a secluded area of campus — still not the ideal location, as far as the students and faculty who pushed the university for years to move the statue are concerned.

The new site eventually will feature a lighted pathway to the soldier and may add headstones to other Confederate soldiers’ graves that have been unmarked for decades.

“Beautifying and aggrandising the cemetery during the relocation of the Confederate monument reinforces the university’s troubling pattern of making something-for-everyone compromises rather than making an unambiguous move toward justice and inclusivity,” faculty members from the history department wrote in a statement last month.

“Moving the monument should be a clear stand against racism, not another embarrassing attempt to placate those who wish to maintain the university’s connection to Confederate symbols,” the statement read.

University Chancellor Glenn Boyce said the new site is not intended to glorify the soldiers.

“It’s not going to create a shrine to the Confederacy,” Boyce told The Associated Press last month at the state Capitol. “People will have to judge that when they see the end product.”

The University of Mississippi was founded in 1848, and the statue of the soldier was put up in 1906 — one of many Confederate monuments erected across the South more than a century ago.

Critics say the statue’s location near the university’s main administrative building has sent a signal that Ole Miss glorifies the Confederacy and glosses over the South’s history of slavery.

The state College Board on June 18 approved a plan to move the monument. The decision happened amid widespread debate over Confederate symbols as people across the US and in other countries loudly marched through the streets to protest racism and police violence against African Americans.

The statue at Ole Miss was a gathering point in 1962 for people who rioted to oppose court-ordered integration of the university.