To curb the cost and waste of record-high printing volumes, a 500-page cap has been placed on free printing from University computers.
According to Director of Personal Technology Services Kara Kelley, students and faculty printing to the Computing and Information Services, Language Resource Center and library cluster printers will be charged for printing as of Sept. 15.
The University implemented the "PAW (People Against Waste) Prints" system in response to a 60 percent rise in printing volume over the past three years, a rise Kelley attributed to the increased accessibility of digital information. Until this year, CIS has covered the increasing cost of printing despite a 3 percent reduction in its budget in 2004, according to the CIS Web site.
To subsidize printing costs, the University is providing every student with a free PAW Prints card worth $25, or at least 500 pages, of free printing. The cards are being distributed at the dispatch printing window in the lobby of the Center for Information Technology during September.
After the card is expended, students will be charged five cents per single-sided page and seven cents per duplex page. Students can pay for the printing with the vending stripe on their Brown ID or purchase a print vending card. Card Value Center machines have been installed in the CIT lobby for this reason, according to Kelley.
Faculty are not eligible for the PAW Prints card - either individual faculty members or departments must pay for all printing done in the clusters.
Faculty and staff were alerted of the printing changes in Morning Mail on May 18 and Sept. 7, Kelley said, allowing them to take the new charges into account when posting assignments and course material on the Web.
While unlimited free printing will no longer be available, CIS expects 500 pages of free printing to be sufficient for most students. According to the CIS Web site, 64 percent of cluster users printed 200 pages or fewer last fall.
Based on this statistic and the growing use of online course materials and WebCT, CIS set the quota at 500 pages.
Though CIS initiated the project, the University asked members of the Brown Environmental Action Network for their input and ideas on the problem.
Allison Silverman '05, an officer of BEAN, said charging students for printing was a last resort. BEAN ran several pilot programs in Fall 2003, including posting environmentally conscious posters above printers, installing pop-ups on library computers urging students to be mindful of their printing and conducting research with other universities.
Yet BEAN, CIS and other institutions found the only way to control the amount of paper consumption was to charge students for printing, Silverman said.
Silverman said it was unfortunate that charging students was the only solution to the problem since students are already paying so much for tuition, and the price of textbooks and course packets is already so high.
She said the point of PAW Prints is not to cause students inconvenience and extra costs. It is simply an "effort to make people think a little bit more about what they're doing and prevent the waste of money and trees."
Stephanie Chu '06 said, "I think it's good we implemented a system that prevents the excessive, unneeded printing some people did."
But at the same time, Chu said in past semesters she definitely exceeded the 500-page limit printing class readings and lecture slides.
According to the CIS Web site, CIS will be closely monitoring the PAW Prints system this year to make sure "it does not detrimentally impact our educational mission."
Herald staff writer Danielle Cerny '06 edits the Campus Watch section. She can be reached at herald@browndailyherald.com.
