Starting this month, students who print more than 1,250 pages in a semester from most computer lab printers will be cut off. The new quota applies to all Center for Academic Technologies labs, including the basement of Gelman Library and excluding residence halls.
According to CATs statistics, the move will affect 7 percent of lab users, or the about 1,100 students and staff members who go through more than 1,200 sheets of paper in a semester.
After this semester, the quota will be lowered and students will be charged for each page over it, said Michael Peckman, CATS manager. He said the new quota is aimed at cracking down on wasteful printing because his department no longer has the budget to support all free printing on campus.
The Gelman Library is considering similar action for its labs on the first through sixth floors, but no details have been released.
Two years ago, University Librarian Jack Siggins and CATs officials discussed implementing a 250-page quota with a 10-cent a page charge after that. The Student Association passed a resolution last fall criticizing the idea of charging for paper.
Peckman said he does not have the budget to allow free student printing because of “technology and politics.” CATs manages all campus computer labs except in the residence halls, some classrooms and upstairs library labs.
Peckman said GW administrators have pushed to charge for student printing during discussions “for quite a few years.”
Siggins said Law School labs were the only ones that charged for printing before, leading some law students take advantage of the Gelman Library’s free printing.
“Just yesterday there was law student who printed out a security exchange document and left it there. It was 1,000 pages,” Siggins said.
Peckman said it is his job to manage whether more money is spent on additional labs, better maintenance and possibly color printers, or on consumables like paper and toner. While the CATs budget increases every year, administrators and technology officials decided this semester that they should spend more on service rather than supplies.
“All of that money comes from the same pool,” Peckman said. “It’s stretched here, there and everywhere.”
CATs reports that 16,000 clients used the CATs labs last semester, 93 percent of which printed 1,250 or fewer pages. Peckman said the 7 percent who printed 1,251 or more pages consumed almost half of CATS’s printing resources.
Each student with a Novell account, which is required to use the CATs labs, printed an average of 314 pages last semester, Peckman reported.
“If a limit affecting 6.6 percent of the population is implemented, it should be well received by the remaining 93.4 percent since their computing dollars are in essence funding the needs of the minority,” Peckman said.
Some students said they do not agree that a quota should be implemented at all.
Sophomore David Cohen, a business major, said he would need more than 1,250 pages.
“Being all five of my classes are on Prometheus and I need to print out the notes, I think 1,250 would affect me,” Cohen said.
Chemistry professor Martin Zysmilich posts his lecture notes on Prometheus and said printing notes from his class should not put students over the 1,250 limit. He wrote in an e-mail that his lectures usually have about 20 slides each and at two slides per page for 20 lectures, or 10 pages each lecture. Students should need about 200 pages a semester for his class.
“What I found out by tracking students on Prometheus is that many of them print the notes more than once,” Zysmilich said. “I guess they print them, and then they lose them and print them again.”
He said GW would end up paying for students to print lecture notes even if he did not use Prometheus.
“If I didn’t post the notes on Prometheus, my other options would be not posting them, and then I’ll have a riot or asking the departmental secretary to Xerox 1,100 10-page handouts per week,” Zysmilich said.
Freshman Alaine Janosy said the quota would not affect her now but may when she is a junior or senior writing a thesis paper.
Peckman said he understands it is hard for students to understand the printing quota because they pay tuition. He said he has made every effort to ease student concerns.
“I had been a strong advocate against a swipe-based system because it would be a burden to the students,” Peckman said, referring to a system in which students would swipe their GWorld cards.
When a student logs into one of the CATs lab computers, page counts will automatically begin.
Peckman said quotas for the summer and fall have not yet been set.
