The Etownian >> News
Heasley delays printer quota payment, cuts campus costs
Thursday February 04 2010
The above image shows the message displayed to students when they print from computers wired to the school network. Though the message includes a dollar amount, students have not, in fact, been charged for any print jobs this year.
According to Heasley, the policy states, “Students will be allocated $16.00 per semester to print on the lab printers. Printing on the front side of a sheet is four cents and the back side is two cents. This will allow students to print 400 — 500 pages (200 — 250 sheets) per semester before they would be charged. Printing for student clubs and organizations can be done on a special printer that ITS installed in the Student Activities area of the Brossman Commons. Individual students will not be charged to print to this printer. The clubs and organizations may eventually be charged, but they are not being charged at this time.”
Many students were under the impression that the policy went into effect as soon as students returned to campus from summer vacation; however, there has been an increasing number of rumors that the print quota is not yet actually in effect.
“We have been tracking the printing but no one is being charged at this time,” Heasley said. “We needed to get the details worked out for printing for student clubs and organizations, and that took a little longer than I anticipated. Once that was finally worked out, I decided to simply monitor the printing for the fall semester. I am pleased with the results I’ve seen so far and will probably continue to simply monitor the printing again this semester without charging anyone. I believe that most of us have changed our printing habits some, due to this initiative. I know that I personally use a duplex printer or copier whenever I can to save some paper and money for the College.”
Although students are not being charged for their print jobs yet, Heasley’s print quota has indeed changed students’ printing habits.
“Recently, I have been checking how many pages I [have] been printing, and I’ve been making sure that I’m printing only the material I want,” sophomore Andrew Scheid said.
With the economy in a continuous downward spiral, it is imperative that the College departments find ways to decrease meaningless spending and use resources more effectively.
“The goal of the print quota is to cut back on the waste,” Heasley said. “About 75 percent of student printing takes place in the library. Several years ago we started noticing that much of what was being printed on the library printers was immediately thrown out.
“We want to cut back on the volume of trash that we are producing. In this tight economy, a secondary goal is to save the College and the students a little money. I have not had a chance to review all of the statistics from the fall semester, but my initial look at the data shows that we probably cut our paper usage in labs by about 30 percent. This means that we are on track to save 500,000 sheets of paper this year. I think that is significant.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Cost-cutting measures, big and small, are essential in these days of economic pressures, and we can all help by being smarter in the ways in which we spend money and use resources. The print quota may be the largest cost-cutting measure to date, and ITS may have just started a wave of smarter spending and resource efficiency across campus.
The Etownian >> News