The University of Missouri system President Timothy M. Wolfe announced his resignation Monday morning after months of protesting from faculty and students. Just hours later, Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin announced that he would be stepping down to a less prominent role within the university at the beginning of the year.

“This university is in pain right now … and it needs healing,” Wolfe told the university system’s governing Board of Curators in Columbia, Missouri. Wolfe also encouraged the university to “focus on what we can change” in the future, not what has happened in the past, according to CNN.

According to Black student leaders on campus, students have been openly using racial and homophobic slurs as well other incidents have taken place on the University of Missouri at Columbia’s predominately white campus. University leaders have been accused of doing little to deal with the issues and respond to the protests.

Students and faculty that took part in the opposition were inspired by the movements that took place last year in Ferguson, Missouri after an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a white police officer, Darren Wilson. The two groups saw themselves as continuing the “Black Lives Matter” national movement.

Jonathan Butler, an African-American graduate student at the university, took it upon himself to address to the university’s lack of action by starting a hunger strike last week. Butler ended his strike after Wolfe announced his resignation.

“It is disgusting and vile that we find ourselves in the place that we do,” Butler said about his strike.

Butler’s hunger strike was followed by the highest-profile blow to the university: the Missouri football team announced on Saturday that it would not play until Wolfe was removed from office.

“The athletes of color on the University of Missouri football team truly believe ‘Injustice Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere’ We will no longer participate in any football related activities until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students’ experience. WE ARE UNITED!!!!!,” defensive back Anthony Sherrils posted to Twitter.

Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel and athletic director Mack Rhoades were in support of the team. 

“It was about supporting my players when they needed me. I did the right thing and I would do it again,” Pinkel told reporters on Monday.