CalArts Ends Grads’ 5 Minutes of Fame : Education: The Valencia institute used to grant performance time along with diplomas. This year, the legendary antics were quashed.

Hell froze over.

Pigs flew.

They must have, because California Institute of the Arts conducted a relatively orderly graduation ceremony Friday.

No one thought it possible at the Valencia school, which has a national reputation for experimental art and a history of commencement-day histrionics.

In past years, students have graduated nude, swung down on ropes to collect a diploma and even faked their own assassination at the podium. One student appeared on stage being whipped by two women singing German opera. The hit of last May’s ceremony was a young man who chain-sawed his way upward from beneath the stage.

At an arts school, or at least this one, such activity was encouraged as self-expression.

But this spring the administration put a cap on the antics. President Steven Lavine rescinded a 20-year-old policy that had allowed each student five minutes of performance time at the microphone during the ceremony.

The problem was, as CalArts’ student body grew larger, recent graduations had lasted longer than the Academy Awards, with even more thank-you speeches. Some ran in excess of five hours.

Lavine’s gag order and strict scheduling were unpopular with many students, some of whom said they planned to grab the microphone anyway. To combat any such impulse, diploma presenters wore miniature microphones on their lapels.

“I’ve got a little mike,” Provost Beverly O’Neill teased students at Friday’s ceremony. “It’s all my own.”

Thus began a proceeding that whizzed by in two hours. Lavine gave a short speech urging students to persevere in their art. Ali Akbar Khan, an acclaimed Indian musician, gave a short speech calling music “food for the soul.” The whole thing might have seemed like a USC graduation were it not for brief breakthroughs of insanity.

Several students brought their dogs to the podium.

The dance school refused to leave the stage until Lavine danced for the crowd.

A film student rented a fire truck and arrived with sirens wailing.

“I didn’t realize I’d be the only one,” said Jon Philion, upon hearing that his act was the champion oddity of the day.

Oh, and a music student scissored off his ponytail. But a single act of spontaneous barbering couldn’t nudge this graduation anywhere near the level of weirdness that CalArts has grown to expect.

“It was really catatonic,” said Kris Kristensen, who graduated in 1987 and came back to watch friends receive their diplomas.

Even a few of the parents, spared sitting in the sun, were nonetheless disappointed.

“It’s a celebration, right?” said Ann Whitney, whose daughter Deborah majored in art. “They might as well have kept it going.”

But most parents thought there was plenty of strangeness to the ceremony, which began with the playing of cymbal-like Indonesian gamelan and ended with African drums. The graduating students seemed to enjoy themselves as well, despite earlier grumblings when the policy change was announced. They used words such as “relaxed” and “smooth” to describe the proceedings.

“It was a lot tamer than usual, but I thought it had a more elegant quality,” said Michelle Netzloff, a dance graduate. “I liked having it go so quickly.”

Students were given an open microphone after the ceremony. By that time everyone had walked to the other side of the building for a buffet.

Teela Shine, another dance graduate, stood on stage and complained to empty rows of seats.

“This school is turning too conservative,” she shouted into the microphone. “If you all have kids here, tell them to act wild.”