An Affair to Remember

How about establishing a secondary market for pages? I'm an MPA, I'm usually only at the Humphrey for classes and rarely use ANY of my allocated pages. Apparently I'm subsidizing everyone else's printing with my fees...

I'd like to sell my excess pages, perhaps through an auction-like system!

Or why not just lower the fee and make the printing a pay-as-you go fee.

I have been wondering about this. Each of my classes so far have had required readings posted on WebCT, which is convenient. I generally print the readings (double sided) and keep them. Although I have not gotten a bill for over charges, I am sure I have come close to 1000 pages per course. How about letting us carry over any balance into the next semester. That seems fair.

Did you know that you get an allotment of printing pages over the summer?

Did you know that if you are a TA/RR that you can print out as many pages that you want for FREE?

I think that pages should be accrued like sick time/vacation time; you get an allotment up front and you can use them at will. Then over your tenure you acquire more and they accumulate. and just like sick time/vacation time, we should be able to donate our unused pages (if we want to) to a collective pool that students can submit their bills to based on their bill charges, smallest charges get paid first.

Terra, it's not quite accurate to say that you get free printing if you are a TA/RA.

They have an "honor system" in place that so you can check a box in your printing summary for each bit of printing that was done specifically related to your TA/RA job.

In theory any student could mark any and all of their printing as being TA/RA related, but we have been warned that the records are audited once in a while and any oddities in a student's printing record may be investigated...

...HIPA = Humphrey Interweb Policing Authority...I always save the documents to my computer and rarely use more than 100 pages/semester. I'm only taking one class at the Hump this fall so it may be less. If anyone runs into page allotment issues let me know and you can have mine.

I fall into the camp of doing a great deal of my printing elsewhere. I feel 1,000 pages is a fair beginning printing allowance, but not if you are downloading vast sums of research information, course resource articles and chapters, etc. On team projects we used a buddy system and shared our printing download, which helps.

Why not provide an elective option of buying an additional 1,000 pages of printing per semester? Allowing a student to pay a bit more upfront, but having the optional overage.

The limit should be raised. I always print double sided with two pages on each side and I still went over last semester. I had to pay an extra $35 just for printing out required readings. Since we pay a $250 fee I think we should get more than 1000 pages. At least 1500, maybe 2000. Considering how much we pay to attend the Humphrey I believe we should be allowed more "free" printed pages.

There is no distinction between printing one-sided vs. two-sided.

I actually think that if you print two-sided, you should get credit for saving paper. I know the big cost is toner, but if you were only charged, say, 1.5 pages for every 2 you printed front-and-back, maybe that would help out the situation by encouraging paper-saving and kicking the "savings" back to students.

I prefer one-sided printing, myself, but that's just because I like wasting resources! Well, sometimes actually it helps readability, especially if you are holding your paper up in front of a window or some other lightsource that reveals the backside of whatever page you are reading...

I second the opinion about pages being treated like vacation days, as well as being able to donate or "sell" unused portions of your allotment to others on the system. If Graham prints 1500 pages and I print 500 (which is the most I've printed in my two semesters), shouldn't our collective fees have that covered?

Of course, I also am a fan of saving resources and giving people incentives to do things like print on both sides, etc...

I vote for either letting us "roll over" unused pages to the next semester or donating them to a pool of some sort.

I haven't yet gone over my printing limit and I have printed plenty of articles, usually two pages per side (I shrink them; they are still readable). My sense is that those who have gone over by noticeable amounts are printing a lot of articles for personal use or excess copies, etc. (I know someone at the Humphrey who, no lie, had $400 in extra charges.) We all know we pay for our printing costs and we all get regular updates in the form of the printing account summary, so it can't very well be a surprise to anyone when they get a charge.

That ssaid, to be annoyingly "Humphrey" about it:
1) I don't think the pages are ours to "sell." They are part of a lump-sum cost that isn't just covering the paper costs (we're talking about printers, toner, wear-and-tear on computers, etc., I would think). Wouldn't selling "printing" be kind of like selling your lunch from orientation? Sure, it's part of the orientation fee you paid. But those lunches aren't exactly yours to sell. I suppose you'd be creating a market and value where there isn't any ... blah blah blah.
2.) There IS an incentive already built into the printing costs. It's called: Print only what you need*.

* I do think that there could be a quick tutorial or reminder or helpful hints that explain how to print multiple pages as it took me forever to figure out how to print multiple slides per page in Powerpoint. This could help a lot of people early on.

Thanks for the input everyone.

I think rolling over pages is a great idea. Last fall I was under by 300 pages and last spring I was over by 300 (and that was with some creative printing settings), so while I was technically on target for the year, I will have to pay in.

I also think that because so many instructors have readings posted on WebCT or in library re-eserves, 250 more pages per semester is a reasonable request.

I really like the ideas that have been suggested so far. I have one that has not been mentioned yet (though admittedly, it might be more difficult to implement). Would it be possible to allocate pages based on the number of classes or credits a student is taking? Last semester I printed many af the articles that I needed for class at home because, with six classes (15 credits) I was very concerned about going over my limit. This semester I am taking fewer classes and will probably have less to print. Otherwise, I would certainly agree with an increase in the page allotment.

I wonder what the MPAs would think of that. I doubt many of them, mainly being of an older generation, would much like reading anything on their computer screens. But if they were only taking 3-6 credits per term, their printing would be severely limited under your idea, Robyn.

But in general it does make sense that someone taking 15 credits probably needs more pages than someone taking 10 credits.

But the way the tech fee is set up, it would probably cause havoc because people taking more credits would have to be charged more for the individual printing fee (I would think). And those taking less would pay less. But as far as I know, the fee also covers areas other than printing that we all "enjoy" such as the labs, the wireless networking, etc.

I have mailed this conversation as a link to Will Bear the technology manager and I will follow up with him later. Thanks for your ideas everyone--I think we've probably scraped the bottom of the proverbial barrel.

I think 1000 pages is plenty. We get a mid-semester e-mail saying how many prints we've used which you can also check at any time. 3000 pages a year per person means a lot of dead trees. Most of what we print just gets tossed (and usually goes unread;). Maybe our Profs could do a better job of setting up the readings so that they can be printed more efficiently. As more people get laptops and wifi, people shouldn't be needing to print so much anyway. that said, 3000 prints a year should mean per year, not 1000/semester.

I think the printer allowance should be a little flexible, based on the requirements for your classes. If you have classes that are particularly heavy on readings outside of a textbook, you would get a little extra printing credit. So if your prof has, say, 1500 pages worth of readings for one class, you would get a 500 page bump or something. Last semester, I had 3 classes that all required a LOT of readings off WebCT, and I ran through my print allowance in like 3 weeks. I also second the idea of a small credit for doub;e-sided printing.

I'm like David above - I used very few pages. I think I averaged about 150/semester. I did all my readings on my computer, and only printed off final copies of projects/papers - not draft copies. I would like to see the Humphrey encourage students to use *less* paper, not more! So, I would be against raising the 1000 page limit. I like the idea of a bartering/selling system, though - since I didn't use all mine it would've been nice! I also like the idea of a simple pay-as-you-print plan, eliminating that horrid $250 HIPA Technology fee.