CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Harvard Law School students want to change the school’s nearly 200-year-old seal because it was also the founder’s family crest, and he owned slaves.

“These symbols set the tone for the rest of the school and the fact that we hold up the Harvard crest as something to be proud of when it represents something so ugly is a profound disappointment and should be a source of shame for the whole school,” Alexander J. Clayborne, a Harvard Law School student involved in the “Royall Must Fall” movement, told The Harvard Crimson.

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About 25 students held their first rally on campus Oct. 23, in part to highlight the law school’s ties to Isaac Royall Jr., a slaveholder who founded Harvard Law School in 1817.

“Royall’s coat-of-arms, with its three stacked wheat sheaves, remains the school’s crest to this day,” according to the law school website, which describes Royall as “a wealthy Antiquan plantation owner and slaveholder who immigrated to Boston.”

The Royall Must Fall Facebook page describes Royall a little differently.

“The current seal is the coat of arms of Isaac Royall, a slave owner and murderer who used money from the sale of slaves to found Harvard Law School. His family made their money from a sugar plantation in Antigua, and he and his father crushed a planned rebellion by allowing 77 people to be burned alive, including Hector, the family’s slave driver and leader of the revolt,” according to the site.

“We ask out own administration to sand in solidarity with the protesters of South Africa, decolonize Harvard Law, and honor the enslaved people who actually founded this school.”

The Oct. 23 Royall Must Fall rally was also designed to “help express solidarity with the college students of South Africa in their brave stand against escalating fees which threaten to exclude black South Africans from achieving a higher education and against the continued economic and social oppression that black students continue to experience in South Africa,” according to the Facebook page.

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Protesters at the October event were encouraged to wear red, and organizers issued a warning to anyone who might have the audacity to wear Harvard Law School attire.

“If you wear Harvard gear, we will be taping over the Harvard Law School seal and writing the hashtags #RoyallMustFall or HectorMust Rise,” the group wrote.

The Royall Must Fall Facebook page links to a January 2014 editorial in The Harvard Law Record by Jonathan Nomamiukor that details how visiting professor Daniel Coquillette pointed out the Royall’s involvement in the school’s founding.

Coquillette recently published a book on Royall that inspired the Royall Must Fall movement, The Crimson reports.

Coquillette called Royall a “coward, and a brutal slaveholder,” but told the news site he doesn’t think the school should change the seal.

“As a historian … you just deal with the fact that this guy founded the school and tell the truth about it,” he said. “To change things is to act like (they) didn’t happen, and that’s a mistake.”

The Crimson also pointed out that Royall Professor of Law Janet E. Halley also seemed to agree with Coquillette’s take during a speech in 2006.

“As the holder of the Royall Chair, I think it’s extremely important that we own the Royall legacy,” she said. “I would be happy to send anyone my Chair lecture about my thoughts on that and to work with anybody in the community who thinks that it’s important for us to responsibly and humanely grasp this thistle.”

Royall Must Fall organizers told Boston.com they’re planning to write law school dean Martha Minow with their concerns, but are currently working to form a broader coalition of students to back their effort.

“Inasmuch as this is a conversation that we are having on this issue and even though this movement is called ‘Royall Must Fall,’ it is not closed to suggestions,” Law school student and Royall Must Fall organizer Mawuse H. Vormawor told The Crimson.