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E-PrinceCorrection appended
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) and the USG proposed a 3,000-pages-per-student printing quota as part of a larger sustainability initiative at a meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) on Monday afternoon.
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What? I can see the need to try to print less [whether in an effort to save money or the environment], but really Princeton? Changing cluster settings to print 4 pages per sheet? That would be difficult to even read. And different allotments for different class years? Why not just have different allotments for different major as well? Engineers obviously don't need as many sheets as English majors.
Geez, why don't we just work towards something that limits printing without limiting the number of sheets? Like for instance, cutting down on repeat print jobs and less available printers. I know I've resorted to reading articles on my computer when there isn't a printer nearby or a printer is broken.
I hope the student body would be able to vote on something like this before it's put into effect.
How on earth does this help students? Isn't the USG there to, you know, represent students?
Better than cutting a student off after a quota would be to put a per-page price on printed sheets after a certain target - say, 1000 rather than 3000 sheets. Every page after 1000 would be priced at a nickel - so students can still print, but they have a incentive to conserve. Concerned about equity/burden sharing? Have the university give each student a $15 credit to their account at the beginning of the year. The students who keep their page-count down - by utilizing the new default settings, annotating class readings on their laptops- get to keep the change.
Students who exceed the 1000 page quota by 300 pages or fewer ($15 credit at $.05/per page is exhausted after 300 pages) still lose no money. This system would be low-cost for students, potentially revenue-neutral for the university, and would provide an incentive for everyone to conserve - not just to penalize a few crazy paper-wasters (although the big-time paper wasters would certainly pay a higher cost).
I'm pretty sure the university has the technological resources to implement and track this. Furthermore, many universities have some sort of printer pricing system. While it would be unfair for students to have to pay for every single sheet they print - especially with how Princeton milks us for dough - this sort of hybrid system could really go a long way to cut paper waste at low cost.
ugh I can'tstand when people print all of their readings. You rarely look at them in precept anyway! Just read it and then come to class
also i don't understand why there are laptops in every class AND printed readings---shouldn't these same people be able to read them online
how do we compare to other schools?
I agree that people should do all of their blackboard readings on the computer. People have this irrational desire to want a physical copy in their hands, but for me this has always been curbed by the inconvenience of walking to a printer.
At any rate, it would be ridiculous to print four pages to a sheet. How could we even be expected to read that!!?!
It's bad enough that for extremely professional external engagements, we aren't able to do single-sided printing. Our Mock Trial team, for example, lost objections to the "authenticity" of exhibits on the basis that there were parts of other exhibits on the back. We had no alternative but to print the case double-sided, because it was a read-only pdf file.
“These new settings would cut the number of pages in half,” he noted.
Actually they would cut them by 75%, simple math ... but thats so dang inconvenient - whatif you want to print an essay or read something without killing your eyes.
You'd still be able to change the default setting if you think a reading will be too hard to read. But have you tried printing four pages to a sheet? It's really not that bad. In most cases, it's the same sized print that is in a normal-sized paperback book.
this is a dumb idea. 4 pages on 1 sheet of paper is ridiculous, and so is doing hundreds of pages of reading on the computer screen.
Sounds fine... it doesn't really affect those that are already reasonable about their printouts. I hate lugging around huge piles of paper anyway, so the 4-page deal should be fine as well, although it should be noted to all detractors that the setting can be changed manually by anyone either to or from 4-pages per sheet. Just try it and see how you like it. You'll be saving paper and you can always change it.