Administrators with goals for conserving paper and energy usage on campus visited the Undergraduate Student Government meeting Monday.
Joshua Lehmden, acting desktop manager for Information Technology Service, Bruce Petryshak, chief information officer for the ITS, and Deb Wells, director of client services for ITS presented the new program Print Responsibly to members of USG. Lehmden, Petryshak and Wells said they are shooting to implement the plan by January.
Print Responsibly is a program that will involve a contract with a print management company, who will provide new printing supplies to the University.
The University will begin charging a fee for the pages anyone on campus prints.
Lehmden, Petryshak and Wells also said faculty, staff and groups on campus will be paying differently than students. In most cases, charges will be made to individual departments.
Lehmden started the presentation by saying there are a total of 1,973 printers, scanners, copiers and fax machines on campus, and the University prints about 70 million pages annually.
‘This is a very environmentally friendly process [with the paper and power usage],’ Lehmden said. He added that the goals of the new system would be to reduce waste and costs and improve functionality, productivity and customer service.
Lehdmen said the Print Responsibly system has been used successfully at other universities across the country.?
The presentation also stated the new system will save $1.5 million and 30-40 percent in paper usage.
Lehmden, Petryshak and Wells then held a time for questions from USG members.
At-Large Senator Clayton Stewart asked how the program will exactly work out. Lehmden explained each student will be allocated a certain number of free pages. After that limit is reached, students will be charged for the number of pages they print using a debit card system with their BG1 cards. The specific charge is still being determined.
‘As you print, you pay for exactly what you use,’ Petryshak said. He said he was aware some students only print around 25-50 pages a semester, and this system is a way of not making them pay for the students who print around 1,000 to 2,000 pages.
Petryshak also assured students they are working to make the cost for the individual sheets very affordable.
Student Welfare Committee Chair Chris Schiazza said many times when he is attempting to print on campus, the printers malfunction. He asked if the new system will charge him for copies he does not receive. Lehdmen said the group has considered a credit system for certain mistakes that are no fault of the student.
Offenhauer Senator Lacy Allen raised the point that many professors require a lot of printing from students. Lehmden said the group’s goal in this project is to help with saving paper and they will be suggesting that professors accept more electronic copies of assignments in order to use less paper.
The three administrators said their goal is to have the program underway by January, but said they still have a lot of work to do, so it may be later in the Spring semester.
