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Forty students dressed as mimes ran out of professor Bill Nericcio’s English 220 final exam screaming. Instead of screaming for joy, these students were screaming for extra credit.

Students who missed too many classes or bombed a quiz had the option of participating in the activity, held Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004 to try and make up for their shortcomings during the semester.

“It’s a little bit of a bribe,” Nericcio said. “But these kids (were) excited about it.”

Led by Nericcio, the students ran from their classroom in Hardy Tower, through the Hepner Hall archway, past the library and up onto Centennial Walkway, directly in front of University President Stephen Weber’s office.

Here, they stopped and played a game of mime tennis using an imaginary ball. The mimes not involved in the game cheered on their classmates while confused students passed by.

At 1 p.m., the students fell to their knees and bowed to the clock tower before promptly jumping to their feet. Nericcio yelled “Malcovich, Malcovich” and the students returned the cry.

From here, the mimes ran to the front of the new Aztec green. After the professor had a chance to regain his wind, they engaged in a game of mime baseball.

When the exercise concluded Nericcio said, “Let’s go have a beer at Monty’s.”

The introduction to literature class, titled “Cinematic Bodies,” explored the relationship between photography, video and reality.

The purpose of the activity, as articulated on the class Web site, was “to underscore the lived relationship between the ‘real world’ and the world of performance, between the mundane sameness of the quotidian and the rich irreality of fiction, photography, and more generally, the world of representation.”

“This school is so conservative and mundane,” Nericcio said. “There are so many Styrofoam professors and detached apathetic students that when they see a chance to do this, they go a little crazy.”

Television film and new media sophomore Evan Weatherford took part in the activity.

“It was definitely an interesting idea,” she said. “At first, I felt a little bit embarrassed, but once everybody got there and was all dressed up it was cool.”

Weatherford said, although she dressed up for extra credit, she would have participated even if none was offered.

The exercise emulated a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blowup, in which mimes run amuck in London screaming and disrupting things.

“The film is about a photographer, and my class is all about the transformation of people into photographs, images and paintings,” Nericcio said. “My class dealt with this kind of transformation and how people get caught up with these representations.”

He said the main character of Blowup, Thomas, is obsessed with photography and it begins to control him.

“What Antonioni wants to suggest is that there is a very real impact that these fictions have on us,” Nericcio said. “For me, that is very contemporary. With the Internet, movies and televisions we are dealing with a whole generation of students that is bought into a pipeline of representation.”

While this is a notion Nericcio wants to experiment with, he admits there is an element of shock he wants to exert on the campus

“I am paid the big bucks to screw with what the status quo is,” he said. “I am bored and I am an old fart professor. They give us all this power and I want to use some of it.”

The class Web site effectively describes the gallant destiny of the participating students.

“Our cinematic bodies will, through our performance, undermine the reality of SDSU and inject some theater into a campus in dire need of excitement.”

Nericcio contended people are not rewarded for thinking outside of the box and commented that he wanted to reward people for taking the risk of doing something different.

“It surprises me how students from California are raised in this mentality in which by the time they get to college the only thing they know how to say is ‘Mother May I,'” Nericcio said. “That’s the question I get the most, ‘Is it OK if I do this?'”

He said this is not because the students are stupid or conservative but because their teachers have punished them for thinking.

“We live in a culture where there is a significant punishment for being intellectual,” he said. “The atmosphere of San Diego is such that students fear being excited about ideas.”