Mail from mr. Ondracka

Using custom bash script and telnet I have sent fake mail to vast majority of students at Faculty of Fine Arts. The mail looked like if it was from Vice-Dean for student affairs Pavel Ondracka: it has his email address in the header, used his style of language and welcomed all students in new building of FFA.

However it also announced several changes in the organozation of the study and faculty. Changes were before debated in non-official DIY student-run “Studio of Pavel Ondracka” which we started in 2014. Some proposed changes were also based on reccomendations in link:https://www.ffa.vutbr.cz/studium/zahranicni-oddeleni/elia/elia-report-en-pdf-p56940[report] of The European League of Institutes of the Arts. Even though the report was nearly 9 year old most reccommendations were not yet implemented. And so in the email we have announced the changes as a done thing, which is starting in upcomming semester. Some of them were:

• creation of centralised mailing list to improve and accelerate communication of important topics and announcements,
• cooperation with other faculties at Brno University of Technology, adding 17 already existing lectures from other faculties to FFA, for example: Color science and technology, Structures and properties of materials, Practical robotics and computer vision, and more,
• introduction of short 1 month studio internships to support students in trying other studios and experimenting more
• autonomous student-run space and lecture room
• support of studios with 100EUR of “lecture money” so that each studio can invite a guest for lecture every semester

Changes were taken positively by students. Some of them even called to the office to register newly available lectures. The enthusiasm however ended soon when Vice-Dean announced the email was just fake and that even though he likes some ideas, nothing is going to change.