The Sustainable Endowments Institute, a group based in Washington, D.C., has released the College Sustainability Report Card 2008. The report

is the only independent sustainability evaluation of campus operations and endowment investments. Published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute, it assesses the 200 public and private universities with the largest endowments, ranging from $230 million to nearly $35 billion.

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Most colleges and universities are quick to link themselves together with anyone famous that may have taken even 1 class at their institution. In Seattle though, it is a student that is fighting for the University of Washington to acknowledge that Bruce Lee, famed martial artist, studied there for 3 years. Courtney Ioane, a sophomore, wants a statue of Bruce Lee to be erected on campus:

“Bruce Lee was more than a martial artist,” said Ioane, 20. “He also had an amazing philosophy of life. He’s a cultural icon recognized all over the world ” except on this campus,” where Lee studied for three years in the early 1960s.

Ioane and 20 other UW students have collected more than 1,000 signatures ” including nearly all the members of the men’s and women’s basketball teams ” as part of the effort to build a Bruce Lee monument.

The statue would begin to represent the diversity of cultures currently absent in the school’s collection of public-art displays, Ioane said. Nearly all the several dozen statues and busts on the sprawling 700-acre campus are of white men, including the school’s namesake, George Washington.

Of the 28,570 undergraduates at UW, more than 35 percent are minorities. One in four students is Asian-American. Ioane, from Spokane, is half-Samoan.

University officials have remained noncommittal on the project, and at least one spokesman questions whether Lee’s accomplishments merit a permanent memorial on a college campus. [Seattle Times]

I for one think that a statue of Bruce Lee would be a nice addition, esp considering the universities tradition of white men, like George Washington, promotion. For more on the philosophy of Bruce Lee watch the video below and go here for more information of the Bruce Lee Foundation. (And real quick, thinking on George Washington, I actually might be OK with his statue - watch the video at the end of this post and I think you’ll agree that old George is pretty deserving):