No Kung Fu poses, please

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Dec 27, 2007

Martial-arts legend Bruce Lee, who briefly studied drama and philosophy at the University of Washington in the early 1960s, has caught the attention of some current students who would like to see a memorial to him on campus.

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About 20 students from a class on activism are collecting signatures on a petition to honor Lee, who would have been 67 last month. Lee died in 1973 at age 32 from swelling of the brain.

The students do not have a design for the memorial, but they know what they do not want: a statue of a man in a Kung Fu pose. They hope to memorialize Eastern philosophies and an Asian face in a predominantly White, European culture.

If a proposal to build a memorial to Lee is presented to the administration, it would be considered, said UW spokesman Norm Arkans, but university officials believe a similar project two years ago addressed similar issues.

Two years ago, a group of students was commissioned to create a monument to the struggles faced by minority Americans.

The result was "Blocked Out," a granite block imprinted with bare footprints on a flagstone path and an ear-shaped wall of stones which was supposed to remind people that many immigrants and their children were not allowed to participate fully in the country they helped build.