Students will pay for paper

With more and more paper being wasted every day in the computer labs on campus the office of information and instructional technology has been forced to come up with a conservation plan.

To remedy this problem OIIT has decided to implement the use of payment cards starting spring semester. These cards will be re-useable and will be treated just like cash.

“When the computer labs on campus were first created, they were used much less frequently than they are now,” said Jim Wolfgang chief information officer, to the office of information and instructional technology. “Things that students are printing now have changed a lot from when we first opened the labs. We have just seen too much paper wasting. Too many students are printing out, documents than they need, we have seen documents that were 50 or more pages long, and 47 of those pages ended up in the trash can.”

The new machines will be located in the Atkinson building, Arts & Sciences, and the library.

“The University of Georgia has been using this program and these machines for quite a while, and there haven’t been any real complications with the system as of yet,” said Wolfgang. ” A lot of schools in the state have switched over to this system. Unfortunately, due to cost issues, this is a change that we have had to make.”

The technology fees that students pay every semester does not cover the cost of printer paper, or the cost of the maintenance of the machines in the labs. The $38.00 undergraduate technology fee covers software licenses in the labs, equipment upgrades, operation of the 24-hour computer lab, and the purchasing of higher end color printers for certain programs. It has also partially been used to fund the wireless network program.

“We have always paid for printing; the department has always been responsible for paying for the printer paper in the labs,” said Wolfgang. “The use of the paper, though very expensive, isn’t our largest expense. Those expenses come from the maintenance of the printers and the cost of the toner that are in those printers. They are very expensive.”

With the new card system in place, students will have to follow new procedures when they wish to print a document.

“When a student wants to print something, they will go up to the machine and put money in, and it will give you a card,” said Wolfgang. “Students need to be careful that these cards aren’t lost. If a student loses their card, they lose all of the money on it. This is why we are recommending that students don’t put high dollar amounts on their cards.
After a student has gotten a card they will then insert the card back into the machine, and it will deduct a money amount depending on the amount of pages you are printing.”

The cost for printing a page in black and white will be 10 cents per page. Using the higher end laser color printer in the Arts & Sciences building will cost 75 cents per page.

“We are looking into the possibility of making these cards compatible with some of the candy and Coke machines on campus,” said Wolfgang. “Next fall we are thinking about combining these cards with the ID cards that everyone gets.

“With the money that we have, we have to set our priorities straight,” said Wolfgang. “We took a rather large budget cut last year, and lost over $100,000 in lottery money funding. Unfortunately this is just a change that we have to make.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 15 2002. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry