STAFF EDIT: Meeting the quota?

Students who chose to check their Boston University email accounts during the summer may have noticed a relatively unexpected BU Today update earlier this month. The article, entitled ‘Reducing the Paper Trail,’ announced the administration’s move to upend the traditional computing and printing system at the university and replace it with a more modern yet less accessible configuration.

The change was made in an effort to close the budget gap and lessen paper waste made my excessive printing, but may not be the most agreeable way to do so for students. The most noticeable modification to students will likely be the reduced print quota, which is now just 100 free sheets per semester, and 12 cents for each page printed over that maximum. In light of other recent initiatives ‘- such as the now-paperless College of Communication ‘- and along with the usual academic expectations of printing out multiple editions of term papers and online or database articles, the reduced print quota couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The university environment is more electronic than ever, and more and more class reading assignments appear cached online to be printed, annotated and carried into class by students. Administration expects students to either get their own private printers ‘- thus tacking on yet another expense to the already exorbitant tuition and ResNet fees ‘- or to pay for each sheet printed over the quota, which can be charged to the student’s Convenience Points account. With every student bringing his own printer to campus, the same amount of paper waste will be produced, with the added environmental expense of more print cartridges, plastic, and even energy. Either that, or the student will continuously accrue 12-cent charges onto his student account, building a personal expenditure all throughout the year while the university eliminates its own.

While a university trying to save money and become more environmentally responsible is never a bad thing, an administration trying to do so by adopting new programs that severely affect students and their academic atmosphere is not an attractive option. Removing trays from dining halls last year was a great way to eliminate an unnecessary financial and environmental overhead while not affecting a student’s quality of life too much. But closing print labs, charging for printing and changing the entire system ‘- especially after the administration patently debunked rumors of such events when they surfaced last semester ‘- seems like a rash and slightly underhanded way to save money while leaving students in the dark. What BU Today calls ‘centralizing and networking’?might actually be a fancy way of cutting necessary resources and pasting the burden on students.