Associated Press

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Tiles with images of swastikas that were installed more than a century ago have been removed from the walls inside an Indiana University building.

The Bloomington school says the tiles at the Indiana University School of Public Health classroom building were installed before the swastika was adopted as the symbol of the Nazi Party. They’re among tiles that include symbols from different cultures.

The (Bloomington) Herald-Times reports an explanation of the symbol’s history was posted near the tiles for many years, but some still found the tiles offensive.

The school says the swastika tiles will be sanded to remove the symbol and remounted.

The tiles were installed during the construction of the original IU Men’s Gymnasium in 1917. It’s now part of the IU School of Public Health classroom building.

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IU officials have faced criticism recently for other campus buildings that students and others have deemed offensive.

In October of 2018, the IU Board of Trustees renamed the former Wildermuth Intramural Center, which had been renamed in 1971 after Ora Wildermuth, a former trustee who spoke out against racially integrating IU dormitories in the 1940s. The recreational facility is now simply called the Intramural Center.

IU officials also decided to stop using Room 100 at Woodburn Hall as a classroom, beginning in the spring of 2018, after complaints about a panel of a famous 1930s-era Thomas Hart Benton mural on a wall in that classroom that depicted a Ku KIux Klan rally. An online petition in the fall of 2017 called for removal of the panel, but the school decided against removing it or covering it, saying that would be a form of censorship.