Just like the Robert E. Lee statue in the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. and another one in the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, the Crusader mascot of Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana, is being set out to pasture.

“This is the right thing to do at the right time and for the right reason,” said Interim President Colette Irwin-Knott, who announced the decision in a video message to the campus community and alumni along with Kaitlyn Steinhiser, president of the student body, reports the Post-Tribune.

The Crusaders were a series of holy wars organized by popes starting around 1095 A.D. and lasted for at least 500 years. The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II with the dual goals of “liberating” the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslims.

Like other Medieval soldiers, the Crusaders massacred civilians and enemy combatants and ransacked communities. Like Hitler, Crusades killed a variety of people including Muslims in the Middle East and in Spain, Jewish, and Christian-Orthodox communities.

“The Crusader name and imagery represent war, violence, racism, xenophobia, and forced assimilation — one of the darkest periods in Christian history,” the petition calling for the image’s retirement said. Supporters of the move added that the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis as well as the use of Crusader imagery during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol prompted the effort to make the change.

Steinhiser says she is pleased university officials reached the decision they did about the Crusader and added that the engagement of alumni in the effort to remove the Crusader, which included the creation over the summer of a Facebook page, “was helpful and powerful.”  Other faith-based universities that previously used the mascot have dropped it over the years. That includes Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, which retired the mascot in 2000.