By Matthew Heller & Isabel Bretz
Staff Writers
Will Meehan ’22 didn’t find out until first-year orientation. When Monique Gardon ’21 was notified, she was shocked. Lily Mello ’20 said she isn’t worried about it. What’s this all about? Printing.
Over the summer, St. Michael’s College replaced its fleet of printers with new machines and a new print-charge system. An August email to students explained the change. At the beginning of each year, students are issued a $40 printing credit to use throughout the year. Black and white pages cost 5 cents, while color pages costs 10 cents. This equates to 800 black and white pages a year, or 400 color pages. If a student exceeds the credit, they are allowed to add money to their account, with a minimum addition of $5.
Student reaction has varied from outrage to shrugs. Lily Mello is a transfer student in her second year at St. Michael’s College. At her previous school, The University of San Francisco, students had to pay 10 cents for every black and white page printed. As a biology major, she had to print her notes before every class, and suspected she had to spend about $50 on that alone. She noticed this year that her professors are asking students to print less. She didn’t express concern with exceeding the $40 credit.
Not every student, however, is content. Meehan has already printed a lot, especially for his first-year seminar. He stated that he’s worried he will eventually have to pay out of pocket for printing.
Gardon said that the school did not give enough time to adjust to the change and that professors may have made the syllabus before they were aware of the printing change. This could include what the professors planned on having their students print.
When St. Michael’s moved to a centralized printing system, printing costs went up, compared to when printers were in nearly all classrooms. Departments no longer had to pay for amenities such as ink and toning. “What the new system will help combat is the behavior of the faculty and staff that tells kids to print stuff,” said Erik Lightbody, the assistant director of technical services. “For faculty and staff, they went from a convenient yet paid-for printing to a slightly inconvenient and free printing,” said Lightbody.
“We are doing anything we can to be more cost conscious, but also more paper-usage conscious,” said Bill Anderson, chief information officer. Anderson discussed the move to decrease the college’s printing cost with department chairs before classes began. “There was concern about the policy, particularly how it might abridge some of the ways professors like to teach.”
Although Information Technology encourages professors to rely on electronic assignment submissions to save students’ printing dollars some professors don’t view the problem as a concern. James Byrne, professor of religious studies, said that even as a professor he has never printed more than 800 pages in one year, and would be surprised if students exceeded the limit. “Canvas and PDFing save students and professors an enormous amount,” Byrne said.
“Hopefully the policy isn’t meant to restrict our printing access but rather make us all aware of how much we print,” said Alicia Norris, professor of business administration. Norris compared new printing charges to the copay system used in the medical industry. “The higher the copay, the more people will use the service,” she said.