Earlham saves money, trees with new printing process
by Sarah Scanlon
No need to hoard paper quite yet, Earlhamites. Students for whom the idea of a printing quota at Earlham conjures up images of a librarian standing by the printer holding a whip, or of a senior scrambling for change the night before a thesis is due, never fear. A printing quota will be implemented next semester, but as part of a larger program that intends to expand printing in general for students.
According to Director of Computing Services Tom Steffes, printing costs have been escalating each year, and Earlham was reluctant to expand printing without an increase in the budget. A Merged Information Services Organization (MISO) survey of students in 2006 supported the idea that students wanted expanded printing, as did another MISO survey conducted in spring of 2009. A gift from an anonymous donor in November 2008 allowed the process of expanding printing to begin, and Computing Services started a series of meetings with Residence Life to discuss how expanded printing would work at Earlham. Former Library Director Tom Kirk also met with Student Government, senior staff, the Information Technology Policy Committee and the Committee on Campus Life over the past academic year to pave the way to move forward with the project.
The pilot of the new printing plan will be up and running after Thanksgiving break. Over break, a printer will be set up in Runyan Center and in the lobby of Mills, both with printing kiosks for releasing print jobs. After break, students will also find a new print management program, PaperCut, replacing what currently appears when logging in at the kiosk. A new web interface called PrinterOn will also be implemented, which will allow students to send print jobs from their own computer to any printer on campus, then walk over and release the job there.
Monitoring of the quota itself will not begin until the spring semester, when printers and kiosks will be set up in the remaining residence halls, as well. Students will get 500 exposures a semester (one exposure is one page printed single-sided; a duplex print job has two exposures, for example). At five cents per exposure, this adds up to a budget given to students of $25 a semester. Students who go over the exposure quota will be charged at a rate of five cents for a single-sided exposure and eight cents for a duplex print job. So if students print duplex, it is essentially four cents an exposure, a 20 percent discount. The 500 exposures at $25 are only if a student would print 500 single-sided pages. However, printing all duplex would get a student 625 exposures for the same $25.
At the end of a full school year, if students have used all $50 dollars of their quota in all single-sided print jobs, they will have printed 1000 exposures on 1000 pieces of paper. Good news for the save-the-trees folks, though, if those were all duplex print jobs, that’s 1350 exposures only using 625 pieces of paper.
Coordinator of Information Services Scott Silverman pointed out that while the new printing system will have a quota, this is not necessarily bad. “This is a multidimensional win-win,” he said. “Yes, we’re trying to contain cost and encourage sustainable and wise use of printing resources. But we are also trying to expand an important service toward the students.”
PaperCut, while similar to the old print management program, also tracks exposures. When students log in at the kiosks, they will find a list of their current print jobs as well as their paper usage, quota remaining, carbon impact, number of trees killed and energy used. The now-default duplex printing on school computers helps students cut down on usage. For those students who are still squirming at the thought of paying five cents for each exposure over the quota, just remember that it is covering operating costs on top of what the college already gives, and in 2007, that number was $35,000, not counting the purchase of any new machines, according to the proposal. So, saving trees by watching usage will also help the students and Earlham save. Reference Librarian Jennie Kiffmeyer said, “We are always looking to save money because we always want to use our money wisely.”
A printing quota is nothing new to many schools. Senior Emily Doering, who transferred from the University of Michigan, remembers a quota of around 400 pages per semester, she said, which differed for students in different majors. Amanda Sommers, a senior at Ball State, is now working with a 1000-page-per-semester quota, which has changed from the 30 pages per day quota of her first years at the university. According to the Information Services Printing Services Proposal from September 2008, many other colleges similar to Earlham (the College of Wooster and Oberlin, among others) have quotas, as well, but few provide printing in residence halls.
Earlham students may have Moodle to blame for their increased paper usage, especially if they need to print a lot of reading from the site. Steffes said that while the introduction of the print kiosks in fall 2005 saved the 40 percent of paper winding up in recycle bins due to accidental double and triple printouts, when Moodle had gone live in fall 2004 usage had increased 40 percent.
Associate Professor of History and African and African-American Studies Director Phyllis Boanes, who when Moodle was introduced found it seemed to be heaven-sent, said, “Moodle is both a curse and a blessing. While it does help students save money on texts,” she added, “the cost of paper is then put on the school. I understand exactly why something like [a printing quota] would be in place.”
Some Earlham students who had already heard of the possibility of a printing quota have already adjusted the way they use paper. Senior Molly McCracken said, “I think something should be done about how much people print.” McCracken often prints two or even four pages of reading on a single side of a piece of paper to reduce her paper usage.
Students don’t have to worry about scrambling for nickels come spring yet. “In the first semester, if someone goes over [quota], we’re not going to be collecting money. We’ll find out why the quota was inadequate,” said Steffes.
The quota is not supposed to “surprise” the students, according to Kiffmeyer. Silverman said, “We’re talking to the community now … [so this] is not too abrupt and [we can] learn by doing.”
Given that the spring semester is the first semester with the quotas in place, after it is over Computing Services will be able to use data gathered over the course of the semester to determine if the quota is adequate.
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