Junior Bethany Mason has frequented the CC-EMU Computer Lab since her first year at the University.
“I come here quite a lot,” she said while typing an e-mail at the lab.
As a freshman, she said the most frustrating part about using the lab was the line of people waiting at the printer.
“I used to know people who would print out entire chapters of books when all I wanted to print was one page,” she said.
The students who abused the free printing option at most campus labs were the reason the University introduced a five-cents-per-sheet charge for printing last fall. One year later, the labs have seen a significant decrease in the number of printed pages.
In the EMU lab alone, paper use has dropped 72 percent from an average of 265,249 sheets per month in 2001-2002, to only 73,000 sheets per month over the past six months. On a larger scale, the EMU lab alone printed an annual total of 1,402,369 sheets before the charge was implemented, compared to 1,441,256 sheets that all campus labs printed after the charge was implemented — meaning all campus computer labs are now printing about as many sheets in total as one lab did a year before the printing fee.
After realizing the paper and toner waste problem two years ago, CC-EMU Computer Lab Manager Amy McCoy went to the University Technology Fee Committee to ask for more money. She said she made the request to avoid the “paying for printing” system that the Knight Library offered at that time. However, the committee denied the request, recommending that labs charge per page.
Because of such a dramatic decrease in paper since the decision, even campus recycling employees have noticed less paper waste.
Student recycling coordinator Jeff Ziglinski said campus recycling employees have been able to reduce the number of trips to campus labs from an average of three times a week to once a week.
“In general, this project has been a success, and any way you look at it, decreasing waste is a good idea.” he said.
But less paper waste isn’t the only consequence of charging students per sheet.
The CC-EMU Computer Lab has also seen a 17 percent decrease in the number of students who have used its facility since the new charge, according to McCoy.
Yet, lab users like Mason said she has learned to conserve instead of avoiding the campus labs.
“I don’t print out as many trivial things,” she said. “Plus, it’s just a pain to put money on your card.”
Through the new fee-based printing system, students can only use campus printers with Campus Cash, which is money charged through a student identification card. Students can put cash on their cards at the University Card Office on the ground floor of the EMU. Although the task seems simple, McCoy said the process is one of the reasons some students don’t print at campus labs any more.
“We do our best to educate people on how to use Campus Cash and where to use it,” she said.
Despite the decrease in users, McCoy said the charge has reaped some great benefits.
“We have saved enough money on the long run to purchase a color printer for the lab ” she said. “And Maintenance has allowed us to spend saved money in other ways.”
Now that the system is going into its second year, McCoy said she feels confident in the success of fee-based printing.
“This year, we’ve had nothing but positive feedback from the community,” she said.