U. announces printing quota

A year-long pilot printing quota system limiting undergraduates to 2,100 sheets of paper and graduate students to 3,000 sheets in printing clusters will go into effect on Oct. 15. Students were informed of the new policy in an e-mail sent Thursday afternoon by Deputy University Librarian Marvin Bielawski and Office of Information Technology senior manager Leila Shahbender.

In the e-mail, Bielawski and Shahbender said that the printing quota system would have both financial and sustainability benefits. Printing is currently free for all members of the University.

“The Library and OIT must meet the goal of a [20 percent] reduction in printing over the coming year, and the quota system enables students to play an active role in helping us adjust to the new budget realities,” they said in the e-mail.

OIT and USG proposed a 3,000-pages-per-student printing quota at a meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community last March.

At the time, both OIT and the USG expressed concerns that the proposed policy might have some negative impacts.

“If we set a limit on 1,500 sheets of paper, that’s actually well above the mean of what people print,” OIT director Steven Sather said in March. “But if everybody says, ‘Oh, I can print up to 1,500 pieces of paper,’ we would actually drive up the printing on campus by 25 percent.”

Though lower than the originally proposed quota of 3,000 pages, the new limit will “be more than ample” for most students based on statistics gathered in the last two years by OIT, Bielawski and Shahbender said. Students will be able to follow how much they have printed when they log in to print release stations.

When a student reaches the limit, he or she will no longer be able to print from stations, though any jobs in process will still finish, Bielawski said. A system is under development for students to request additional pages, but “details for this have not yet been worked out,” he added.

Sheets printed before the quota takes effect will not be counted, Bielawski said in an e-mail to The Daily Princetonian.

“We will restart the count on Oct. 15, so previously printed pages will not count,” he noted.

The University has also adopted a printing quota for University guests to help achieve the 20 percent printing reduction goal.

Bielawski explained that “guest users of the Library will also now have a quota,” adding that he and Shahbender “are also hoping that all members of the University community recognize the benefits of sustainability and pull together to help with the required budget savings.”

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Over the past two academic years, students have printed almost 24 million pages in printing clusters throughout campus. During the 2007-08 academic year, the average number of pages printed by an individual student was 1,291, with a standard deviation of 1,446. Students were responsible for 20 percent of all printing at the University during the 2007 fiscal year.

“Student printing has been steadily going up over the last five years,” Sather told the ‘Prince’ in March. “Each year we’re looking at an addition of — in a good year — 5 percent to over 15 percent [in a bad year].”

The new quota system comes after a year and a half of meetings with staff from OIT and the University Library, various administrative and academic managers, the Office of the Dean of the College, the Graduate School, the USG and the Graduate Student Government, Bielawski said.