The governing body of Oriel College, Oxford, has expressed support for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes that currently stands in a niche facing on to the High Street. The stone statue was erected in 1911 to adorn the façade of a new building funded by a bequest from Rhodes, who had died nine years previously. Since 2015 the statue has been a focus of Rhodes Must Fall, an international campaign to dismantle monuments to the British imperialist and decolonise spaces of higher education. In 2016, the governing body of Oriel voted to preserve the statue in situ, while ‘seek[ing] to provide a clear historical context to explain why it is there’. Following renewed calls for its removal during recent Black Lives Matter protests in Oxford, the governors have now voted to launch an ‘independent Commission of Inquiry’ into issues surrounding the statue, stating their ‘wish to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes and the King Edward Street Plaque.