California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) President Ravi S. Rajan was met with loud boos from students at the school’s graduation ceremony last Friday, May 15. As Rajan took the stage to deliver his commencement address, students held signs that read “Hold the Admin Accountable” and “Save Our Faculty & Staff” in front of the lectern, references to recent financial issues and staff layoffs at the esteemed Southern California art school.
“Graduates, today is about you, not me,” Rajan insisted as the chorus of boos swelled. After delivering the line, “Some of you have told me that the future feels like something that is happening to you, rather than something you are shaping,” Charmaine Jefferson, chair of the board of trustees, joined him onstage and unsuccessfully appealed to the students to let Rajan finish his speech.
The students’ discontent comes at a time of crisis at CalArts, which is facing a multi-million-dollar budget deficit and significant cuts to staff and faculty. At the end of 2024, more than 75% of the staff announced their intention to form an employee union, citing low pay, increasing workloads, and lack of job security among their grievances.
“He was booed because many people at CalArts, faculty and students alike, see him as the source of many of the school’s financial issues,” Matthew LeVeque, who received his MFA and DMA from the CalArts Herb Alpert School of Music, told Hyperallergic about the reaction to Rajan’s speech.
“His main responsibility is fundraising, but CalArts is in a several-million-dollar structural deficit that he claims ‘can’t be fundraised out of,’” LeVeque continued.
Reached by Hyperallergic for comment on the commencement, a CalArts spokesperson said the school “values free expression and critical inquiry.”
“We recognize that moments of passionate expression are part of a vibrant academic community, particularly during periods of institutional change,” the spokesperson said.
A chart designed by CalArts faculty outlines how the administration allegedly mismanaged the budget crisis, claiming that between 2016 and 2025, the school “grew richer in paperwork and poorer in pedagogy.” The school’s budget woes have been exacerbated by a recent decline in enrollment from 1,500 to roughly 1,200, according to a 2025 letter from the Office of the President.
This past March, the faculty union held a major “Chop from the Top” rally on campus. “The CalArts administration has proposed a $5 million cut to faculty and associated staff positions over the next two years through layoffs and non-renewals,” Westley Garcia-Encines, director of operations in the School of Theater, said in a statement for the demonstration. “It’s not fair that our most precarious coworkers have to shoulder the worst of these cuts.”
He noted that the school has experienced a 30% reduction in faculty over the past two years “through voluntary separations, bridge to retirement offers, and now non-renewals.”
A CalArts spokesperson told Hyperallergic at the time of the rally that the institution is “reorganizing its leadership structure and conducting a top-to-bottom review to better align resources and improve efficiency.”
The union also held a smaller rally before graduation, though both Garcia-Encines and students who spoke with Hyperallergic explained that the students’ uproar was a spontaneous expression of discontent, inspired by but not organized in collaboration with the union.
The boos that drowned out Rajan’s speech are part of a larger pattern at graduations this year, as speakers at other schools around the country were met with similar reactions from students, often in response to issues surrounding the rise of AI.
Although not directly addressed by students’ signs or chants at graduation, it is worth noting that CalArts announced a partnership with Chanel last year to create a new Center for Artists and Technology that will focus heavily on artificial intelligence and machine learning. According to LeVeque, the project “has been widely unpopular considering the rate at which AI is rendering creative labor negligible.”
In addition to budget issues and staff layoffs, students said they feel that the president and the board are increasingly distanced from and out of touch with their needs.
“Ravi and his office make decisions that actively hinder the learning experience of students, partly because they have no concept of student life or the wishes of students,” Drew Gebhardt, who just received his MA in Film from CalArts, told Hyperallergic.
“I would like to see a truly open line of communication between faculty, staff, students, and the upper administration and the board,” Gebhardt continued. “I would hope to see a school that operates on the same values that it espouses to its students.”
