WHEATON, Ill. (AP) — The head of Wheaton College says the suburban Chicago school has removed a plaque that referred to indigenous people as “savages.”

The Chicago Tribune reports that the Christian liberal arts school’s president, Philip Ryken, wrote in a letter to faculty and students that the reference was dehumanizing and that any descriptions on campus of people or groups “should reflect the full dignity of human beings made in the image of God.”

The plaque was donated by the school’s class of 1949 and paid tribute to five missionaries who were killed in Ecuador in 1956, including three Wheaton alumni.

A college spokesman says some people had complained about the plaque’s phrasing. It will be replaced.