College Keeping Tabs on Printing
by Emily Delbridge '13News Writer
January 21, 2010
No, you are not being charged to print. Many Hamilton students have been left confused, as they have begun printing information and assignments for spring classes. This semester, a new conservation program is being tested on campus: when a job is sent to a public printer, the student is notified of the "cost" of that job. However, there is no link between the notification on the screen and your Hill Card account.
The system is meant merely to raise awareness about the resources each student is consuming and to decrease the amount of resources that students use.
Several years ago, the student-run Hamilton Environmental Action Group (HEAG) met with Information Technology Vice President David Smallen in the loft above the Little Pub. The student organization was troubled by the large amount of waste produced in the printing labs on campus from papers never retrieved and/or mistakenly printed.
This semester, a prospective solution to this student concern is being implemented. Although there will no charge to students at this time for the products printed, the administration hopes that being reminded that nothing is free will urge students to look more closely at their individual consumption and reduce waste where it currently occurs.
PaperCut, the system responsible for the cost notifications, offers a breakdown of each student's total use of resources over the semester (each time you print it adds the cost of that job to the cost of all previous jobs, keeping a running total for the semester).
The "Details" option in the "print cost" notification window takes the student to a page showing the number of trees that have been used for their printing needs, the amount of carbon being expended for the pages and a graph of their total consumption.
Hamilton is not alone in its attempt to manage waste. In fact, several colleges have achieved positive results by implementing the PaperCut system or comparable programs. Williams College, for example, began using the PaperCut program in the fall, and within one month saw a 31 percent reduction in total printing and a 70 percent decrease in waste. Hamilton hopes that there will be similar results on this campus as the visual reminders of cost to the institution and to the environment appear over the semester.
We can expect to see an official quota in place on the amount of printing each student may do without incurring a fee by the beginning of the fall semester. According to Information Technology Services Training Coordinator Maurine Scoones, "The goal is not to make a profit."
Scoones said that when the quota is set, it will be high enough so that only in rare instances will a student go over their allotted quota. To make sure of this, it will be set in aggregate form, so, for example, if the research done this semester shows that seniors require a greater amount of pages than do the other classes, their quota will be raised proportionally.