A five cent per page printing fee instituted in campus libraries and computer labs last Fall Quarter remains under examination after ASG sent a proposal to vice president of information technology Mort Rahimi at the end of May.
The initial proposal, turned down by Rahimi late last month, proposed a quota of somewhere between 100 and 300 free pages per student each quarter. Associated Student Government Student Services Vice President Courtney Brunsfeld and President Jordan Heinz are currently preparing a response to Rahimi’s letter.
Heinz, who said most schools don’t charge a per page fee, said he and Brunsfeld should have a response ready in the next couple of days.
“It’s nickel and diming students, and that is something that the university promised not to do,” Heinz said. “This is behavior and policies that we don’t expect coming from the administration.”
The printing fee was implemented last fall to combat the excess paper piling up near the machines.
“At the end of the day when the staff was cleaning up, there would be stacks of papers (in the computer labs) that students printed and just left there,” Rahimi said. “The reintroduction of for-fee printing has eliminated wasteful printing…. The ASG proposal to grant each student an allowance of free printing can only serve to increase unnecessary printing and thus re-introduce waste,” he said in the letter to senators.
The university policy worked: There was a reduction from the previous academic year of more than 80 percent of pages printed in NUIT computer labs, the letter said. Fewer than 50 percent of students used lab printers during the 1999-2000 academic year, a number that dropped to 33 percent this year. Because of the fees, the average senior spent $3.60 on copies during spring quarter.
“We dropped (the printing fees) in about 1994 because in those days it wasn’t automatic like it is now,” Rahimi said. Then, students used punch cards instead of magnetized IDs, he said.
“After (dropping the printing fees), the printing kept going up,” Rahimi said. “Instituting the pricing helped a lot.”
But students weren’t happy. Brunsfeld said that it was possibly the most negative reaction that ASG saw during the past year.
Rahimi did suggest NUIT would be willing to grant funding to ASG for some students who demonstrate that they are experiencing financial hardships.
He also said that he is awaiting ASG’s response to his last letter. “I look forward to discussing the issue with Courtney,” Rahimi said.
Though the resolution of the issue is still uncertain, one thing is.
“(The compromise) would have to be done before students arrive (on campus in the fall) so it could be implemented,” Rahimi said.
