$27,000 saved through OIT printing quota

Just four months after the Office of Information Technology (OIT) implemented printing quotas, printing has decreased by roughly 13 percent, saving the University roughly $27,000, OIT senior manager Leila Shahbender said.

A printing quota was proposed by the USG and OIT last March in an effort to reduce library and cluster printing. The pilot program, which went into effect on Oct. 15, limits undergraduates to 2,100 sheets of paper and graduate students to 3,000 sheets for the academic year. The initiative’s goal was to reduce total student paper consumption by 20 percent from its start date last October through April.

“What drove the quota system was not so much money as it was sustainability,” Shahbender said. “As we started getting serious about implementing it, it just so happened that there were budget changes.”

Shahbender said she believes the quota has been relatively successful so far.

“I was hoping for more,” she explained. “But this is a first step, and it’s progress.”

Students who exceed their allotted print quota are unable to log in to OIT print release stations and must contact OIT to request additional sheets. When considering requests, Shahbender said, OIT operates on an “honor system,” though it also considers the reasons students cite for exceeding the quota.

Shahbender said that there have been 60 requests for quota increases so far, 80 percent of which have been from undergraduates.

But, she noted, some were actually refunds due to a system miscalculation, so the actual number of students who have surpassed the quota may be smaller.

“The important thing is,” she added, “that we’re talking about 140 people out of a population of 7,000.”

Brian No ’10, who previously worked on the USG’s sustainability working group, said that the quota has not appeared to affect too many students.

“I can say that, among my friends and acquaintances, I have yet to hear about anyone who has reached the quota,” he said.

No is also a former news writer for The Daily Princetonian.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Sociology concentrator Rachel Blum ’11 said she now refrains from printing out most of her readings, instead reading them on her computer.

But Taylor Carroll ’10, a psychology major, said in an e-mail that the quota has not had a significant effect on her printing decisions.

“I guess the quota has made me a little more aware of the amount of pages that I’m printing off,” she explained. “But, that being said, it’s not like I wouldn’t print something out that I needed for a class or my thesis even if it made me go over my quota.”

Carroll noted that certain segments of the student population may be more affected by the quota than others, citing athletes as an example.

“I just know from my experience that before an away weekend, when I knew we’d be traveling on a bus and without Internet access for a couple of days, I always printed off everything that I thought I might need just to be on the safe side in order to keep up with work,” Carroll explained. She is a member of the women’s volleyball team.

Students’ reading needs also depend on their departments.

“I can’t really speak for other departments, but printing out pages and pages of articles for class and for independent work is pretty much an unavoidable part of being a psychology concentrator,” Carroll explained. “When you’re required to write papers with 20 to 30 articles as references, I’ve found it impossible to stay organized without printing all of them out as hardcopies to sort through.”

Anthropology major Jessica Lander ’10 also said in an e-mail that she found the quota stressful while working on her thesis.

“Because I write multiple drafts and edit best on a hard copy, the quota has deterred me from heavily editing my more minor papers — in fear that I will have exhausted my quota when I need to edit my thesis,” she explained. “In the meantime, as a precaution, I am using my engineering friends’ quotas to print thesis drafts.”

But molecular biology concentrator Michael Smith ’10 said in an e-mail that he doesn’t think students’ different levels of reading requirements need to significantly impact their printing habits.

“I understand that certain departments have more reading to do, but most of the time, we get it off of E-Reserves anyways,” he said. “I’d bet that most of the people aren’t reading everything anyways, so why print it in the first place?”

Smith said he reads his papers online, noting, “If anything, the quota is too high.”

Shahbender noted that data collection is still in its preliminary stages.

“We’re trying to gather data ... on why people need more [sheets],” she said.

Shahbender also said that OIT is currently working on other sustainability initiatives, such as its new LEED-certified building, its use of virtualization and a power management program for institutional computers on the network.