| OPINION
| OCTOBER 21, 2005
Editorial/Our View
Be Printer-friendly
Curb excessive printing to avoid
fees and save university money
The UTA Libraries and the Office of Information
Technology will implement a printing quota in the spring. The printing
policy will be in place to discourage frivolous printing, while
still allowing students to print a reasonable amount for free.
Beginning next spring, students will have $70 worth of prints to
last them through the summer semester. In fall 2006, students will
have a $100 quota to last through the fall, spring and summer semesters.
The quota doesn’t include cover sheets, and once the limit
has been exceeded, students will have to pay 10 cents per page.
Student organizations will be given a $200 quota per academic year.
A $100 quota is worth 1,000 pages of single-sided black-and-white
laser printing. This is a generous gesture from the UTA Libraries
and OIT. Students who print more than 1,000 pages in a year should
reconsider what is important to print and what is not. Even though
die-hard gamers may disagree, video game manuals aren’t a
printing necessity.
A total of 184,669,429 pages were printed in university computing
and library facilities last year. The cost of paper and toner to
support the printing volume was $296,549. By implementing the printing
quota, the university hopes to save money on paper and toner.
Free printing is a privilege that some students abuse. It is inappropriate
to print game manuals, wedding invitations and entire novels on
university equipment.
Not only do large print jobs use a lot of paper and toner, other
students have to wait for the jobs to finish. They may only be waiting
for two pages to print but can’t get it until Moby Dick finishes
up.
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Editorial
round-up
The issue:
Next spring, UTA Libraries and the Office of Information
Technology will implement a quota on free printing for
students.
We suggest:
Students should print only what is necessary.
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