Tisch _ printing for profit?

You've seen it before: piles of paper spread over the printers and scrap tables in the Tisch printing area. Lines of people who cannot find the articles they are printing, and confusion as to which papers belong to who. This is the scene that unlimited printing has offered us in Tisch. In Eaton, printing can be just as frustrating, with long lines and the need to release your computer each time you want to print.

As frustrating and annoying as the waiting and the confusion is, we as students still have the option of free printing, a necessity to many students without printers or with professors that force you to find and print class reading on your own. Most would argue that a little inconvenience at the library or at Eaton is worth it, when you can walk out with your 50 pages of reading for class in your hand.

That is going to change, however. As you may or may not have heard by now, beginning in the Spring Semester of 2003, the University has made it a policy to charge for printing in both the Tisch Library and in the Eaton Computer lab. The fee will be ten cents per page, and the method will be similar to the copying method in Tisch, involving debit type cards you prepay. My goal here is not to criticize the idea of charging, but rather to criticize this method, which is both ridiculously costly and inefficient.

I understand Tufts' goal is an environmental one; a desire to reduce the amount of paper wasted. I assume the theory behind this decision is that if students, and professors, have to pay for their printing at Tisch and Eaton then they will not print unnecessary documents, thereby eliminating the annoying and wasteful cluttering at the printing stations. Although this might achieve the goal, it will consequently cause many other problems.

Firstly, without doubt, the number of people using the library will decrease. Maybe this will diminish traffic, but at the same time it stops people from using all the resources that the library has to offer, and that we pay for with part of our tuition.

True, we can use online databases off campus, but that involves the annoying hassle of figuring out how to sign in, which I can tell you, after almost three and a half full years at Tufts, I still don't know how to do. The librarians will now have to deal with handling students that are off campus trying to use the Tisch resources, which will inevitably tie up their time, which would otherwise be spent helping students in the library.

Secondly, I have a sneaking suspicion that the method of using the debit cards to pay for printing will create even longer lines, and more confusing printing processes. I don't know exactly how Tisch, especially, plans on implementing this payment process, but I know that if I have to wait for each of the ten people who are printing at the same time as me to go one by one and insert their cards before they print, the wait alone will deter me more than the price.

And speaking of the price, I doubt anyone would disagree that ten cents is a ridiculous price to pay. An average journal article can run anywhere from seven to 20 pages, and that gets expensive when doing research papers, printing for class, etc. I will not argue that Tufts does not have the right to charge us, however I do propose a better plan.

Let us have free printing up to a certain degree. Instituting a limit is not a bad idea, and it would alone hopefully decrease the amount of paper wasted. Then, if a student needs to go over that limit, I think five cents a page is a much more reasonable price than ten. Ten cents a page lends itself to the suspicion that this "pay for print" idea may be nothing more than a profit scheme. If the key is to curb the amount of paper and resources wasted, there are better way to accomplish that than charging a straight fee.

The new printing policy at Tisch may be admirable in its goal of saving paper and reducing wastefulness, but it is unrealistic in its effectiveness. Few students will happily pay ten cents per page for printing, and if we as a University want to keep the resources in the library available to all students, we seriously need to voice our opinions and discontent with this new policy.

Viet Le is a Senior majoring in BioChemistry