Student Senate to Hold Open Forum on Printing Issues
Ben Harley
Issue date: 10/13/09 Section: Opinion
Today, October 13, 2009, Student Senate will be holding an open forum to discuss a program that will limit the amount of printer paper students can use in a year. The new regulation will allot each student with one thousand pieces per year. If a student goes over the designated amount of printer paper allotted, they will have to pay five cents for each additional page. Currently there is no limit on the amount of printer paper that a student can use. The program is scheduled to launch next semester.
According to Charles Williams, Senior Director of Information Technologies the new limit should not affect most BU students. According to a study conducted last year, one thousand pages of printer paper covers 80% of the student population's printing needs.
So who are the 20% that are going over this number? Williams seems to believe that they are students who are printing entire web pages instead of choosing select passages that they need, but many students that I talked to believe that it is the science majors that will suffer from this.
Many science students print out massive texts from the Internet that they need for their classes. These texts range from specialized papers to power point presentations. Several science majors that I talked to believe that this limit would hurt them specifically. Williams believes that no specific major would be exclusively hindered by the new limit.
Instead Williams believes that the limit will only hinder students who waste paper. He sites the economic principle of free goods to explain why any student would go over one thousand pages, "If you don't have to spend anything to get something, you don't value what you're getting."
The real answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. Science majors do print more than most others, but they do not really need to print as much as they do. I often see entire power points abandoned on the printers. Some of the responsibility should go to the teachers as well. If a teacher wants a student to know personally developed texts, then they should find other means of making it available to students - means that do not require the use of a student's paper allotment.
According to Charles Williams, Senior Director of Information Technologies the new limit should not affect most BU students. According to a study conducted last year, one thousand pages of printer paper covers 80% of the student population's printing needs.
So who are the 20% that are going over this number? Williams seems to believe that they are students who are printing entire web pages instead of choosing select passages that they need, but many students that I talked to believe that it is the science majors that will suffer from this.
Many science students print out massive texts from the Internet that they need for their classes. These texts range from specialized papers to power point presentations. Several science majors that I talked to believe that this limit would hurt them specifically. Williams believes that no specific major would be exclusively hindered by the new limit.
Instead Williams believes that the limit will only hinder students who waste paper. He sites the economic principle of free goods to explain why any student would go over one thousand pages, "If you don't have to spend anything to get something, you don't value what you're getting."
The real answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. Science majors do print more than most others, but they do not really need to print as much as they do. I often see entire power points abandoned on the printers. Some of the responsibility should go to the teachers as well. If a teacher wants a student to know personally developed texts, then they should find other means of making it available to students - means that do not require the use of a student's paper allotment.
Be the first to comment on this story