…not what I used to do. Two art professors have traded their tenured positions for the unemployment rolls in protest:

Two tenured art professors have resigned from the University of California, Los Angeles, because the school refused to suspend a graduate student who may have used a gun during a classroom performance art piece.

Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins, internationally known artists who taught at UCLA for more than two decades, filed their retirement papers Dec. 20.

Why did they resign? A representative for the pair stated that they felt that the performane "was sort of domestic terrorism." And what was the actual performance?

In the brief performance on Nov. 29, the student appeared to point a loaded handgun at his head and pull the trigger, a student and law enforcement officials told the Los Angeles Times.

The weapon didn't fire, but after the student left the room a noise that sounded like a gunshot was heard outside.

Is this art? Not in my castle, but perhaps in the Art Department at a major university. Remember that this student was under their tutelage. Keep in mind that he was a graduate student. It also might add some perspective if the reader knew this:

Burden did performance art in the 1970s and his best-known performance featured an assistant shooting him in the arm with a .22-caliber rifle. That work was different because the audience never felt in jeopardy, while the UCLA performance inspired "genuine fear," Watson said.