Nearly two years ago, a few students at the University of Washington ignited a controversy by objecting to a proposed monument meant to honor UW alumnus and decorated World War II fighter pilot Gregory “Pappy” Boyington.

Now a student group on the Seattle campus is on the proponent side in a conversation about another proposed memorial, this one to martial arts icon Bruce Lee, who was once a philosophy major at UW.

Bruce Lee?

He’s not just your father’s karate expert. “He’s a cultural icon recognized all over the world – except on this campus,” UW sophomore Courtney Ioane, of Spokane, said in a Los Angeles Times story. She’s among the advocates who have collected more than 1,000 signatures on a petition calling for a life-size statue of Lee in a seated, meditative position.

OK, but Bruce Lee?

At present, the 700-acre campus boasts several dozen statues and busts. Typical of institutions that go back a century or more, the choice of subjects for those sculptures is heavily weighted in favor of famous white men – a point stressed by one of the student senators back in February 2006 when they were protesting the memorialization of Boyington.

That’s a valid point, and Norm Arkans, the university spokesman quoted in the Times article, put up a feeble and inadequate defense to it. He pointed to a student-created artwork titled “Blocked Out,” consisting of an ear and footprints in an abstract rendering of the nation’s inability to hear the pleas of slaves.

Like many other colleges and communities, the University of Washington has adorned its lands with tributes that reflect only a partial recognition of praiseworthy accomplishments. The state’s largest university needs to take conscious steps to achieve more balance. At a school where every fourth undergraduate student has an Asian heritage like Lee’s, situated in a city with a rich Pacific Rim influence, it shouldn’t be hard to identify plenty of worthy subjects.

More worthy than an ex-student who never graduated but went on to fame making movies about beating people up.

Arkans says there is a methodical process for deciding which public-art projects will be approved and which won’t. It can take years, he says.

A deliberative system is commendable, as long as it is informed by a principled worldview. UW officials need to acknowledge the imbalance of their present array of campus memorials and use the process to correct it.

It is time for the UW campus statuary to catch up with the diversity that exists in the living student body.