As of last February, the Library and Information Services (LIS) instituted a printing system aimed at reducing the number of pages printed by setting a quota for students. Now a year later, the results provided by the system have shown that the number of pages printed, both single and double sided, has dropped by 75 percent.
Mike Roy, dean of LIS, said that the printing quota was originally set to become more environmentally aware and to cut budget costs, while still being sensitive to students’ needs.
“We would find at the printing stations reams and reams of print jobs left. We had tons of wasted printing,” Roy said. “Now if you walk by any of the public printers, there are no longer piles of paper lying around.”
The LIS student advising committee originally wanted to cover 80 percent of student printing costs, estimating that for first-years, sophomores and juniors that would be 500 pages, and for seniors, 800 pages. Using a new system feature, LIS found that there were 201,535 pages printed from 22,857 print jobs.
During this fall, only 232 students, or 10 percent of the total student population, went over the allotted quota. The total spending was $4,457.50, which averages to $19.21 per student. Divided between all students, the total pocket expense averages to be less than $2.00 per student.
The money spent by students is being used to continue the system, not serve as profit for the College.
“The idea is that any of the money we take in, we will just plow back into the cost of the printing program,” said Roy. “We are hoping that printing can be more budget neutral.”
Roy estimates that four to five million pages of paper have been saved since last year equating to 1,005.2 kg of CO2 and 33,117.4 bulb hours saved.
Despite the environmental benefits, the added cost for some students is a source of frustration.
“The quota is not the issue,” said Oona Zeigler ’13. “I take a lot of literature classes, and it’s just a problem when some of my professors expect us to print all of the material to annotate and interact with the texts.”
Associate Professor of Political Philosophy Kateri Carmola has changed the structure of her course readings to suit the new print quota system. Because she feels having physical copies of readings is absolutely essential for learning, she prints readings out for her students at her own expense instead of requiring students to print themselves.
“To me it seems like at an educational institution, one of the most important things I think we should spend money on are the tools of learning,” Carmola said in a phone interview. She does not want students to feel they had to choose between spending the money or having a physical copy of the reading.
“I also thought it would just make me think more clearly about what I actually assigned,” she added. “I think there’s usually too much stuff assigned,” specifically with regard to articles. Books and anthologies, she explained, are generally more useful for reading than a variety of articles. The differing opinions that articles bring can be supplied in lecture, while the value of the original material remains in the texts themselves.
As for the resource problem, Carmola believes the benefits of printing greatly outweighs whatever ecological effects there are, especially given the fact that the College uses 100 percent recycled paper and there still remains a backlog of materials waiting to be recycled. “I’m all for creating a market for recycled paper,” she said.
While some struggle with the printing limit, outreach to faculty was made to determine the total cost of each course, which includes both books and materials that need to be printed. Overall, the estimate has proved to be accurate, making printing more budget-neutral for the College.
“The reality is that most schools already do this and those that do not are getting very close because it is not affordable to have this as a free utility,” said Roy. “Now that we have our foot in the door, I do not see any reason to undo [the system].”
Additional reporting by Adam Schaffer
Printing quota saves 4-5 million pages
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