SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A watered-down version of a bill that would start a process for Dixie State University to change its name passed in the GOP-dominated Utah Senate Wednesday after an unusual public disagreement between the state’s legislative bodies.

The bill’s sponsors say the updated legislation would give the community the chance to have more input as it moves to the House.

Dixie State had faced scrutiny in the past over its name but resisted changing it. The area was nicknamed Dixie, a reference to Southern states, when settlers with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, many of them from the South, tried to make it a cotton-growing mecca in the 1800s.

Supporters say the name is important to the area’s heritage and is separate from the history of slavery. But efforts across the U.S. to remove monuments, names and other Confederate symbols have intensified during the nation’s reckoning over racial injustice.

Dixie State has taken other steps in recent years to remove Confederate imagery. In 2009, the school’s nickname was changed from the Rebels to Red Storm. A statue depicting a soldier on horseback waving a Confederate flag with one hand and reaching out to a wounded soldier with the other was removed in 2012.

Senate Republicans agreed last week to hear the legislation after appearing to stall the bill, which had been passed by the House. University students rallied at the Capitol in Salt Lake City last week to urge lawmakers to revive the name change plan.