Ashley Dean
English 190
Dr. Field
April 21, 2010
Print Quota at Clemson University
On Monday, April 19, 2010, at noon, “Inside Clemson” sent out an e-mail to Clemson University students, informing them that the Administrative Council had approved a Print Quota, to begin enforcement during the Fall 2010 semester. The Print Quota will cap students at three hundred and fifty pages per semester. While this may sound like a lot of pages (and for students in some majors, it is probably generous), for students in majors like Communication Studies or English, it could be an issue. For every page beyond three hundred and fifty, students must pay five cents per page. There are plenty of reasons why the Print Quota is not a good idea at Clemson.
I think the biggest issue at hand here is the unnecessary spending issue. Clemson claimed that the main reason for the Print Quota is because of a budget issue. Apparently, all of Clemson’s budget issues are a result of students printing too many things. However, Clemson had the money to be doing construction by the stadium and on the North Green. Clemson can’t afford for their students to print things for class, but they keep Bowman green, clean out the Reflection pond, and most recently I saw new benches being built (because there weren’t enough around campus before). Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that some of the money I pay goes toward keeping the campus clean and having a pleasant environment. I’m glad I go to a school with nice landscaping and benches to sit on. But I’d much rather have resources that contribute to my learning experience, like printing things for my classes free of charge. I’m really not thrilled about the idea of having to pay five cents per page, when I pay a lot of money to attend school here. I’d rather have a few less benches. I also would have preferred that Clemson didn’t spend money to build a brick and stone “Clemson” sign by Bowman Field – twice. I’m just saying, they can afford to build that sign twice (and it couldn’t have been cheap), but it costs too much for me to print for my classes?
To be fair, I have a little more invested in this issue than a typical Clemson student. I’m an English major, and although a few of my teachers are willing to accept essays over e-mail, most require a hard copy. And even with the papers, three hundred and fifty pages might be enough (even with the stories, poems, essays, and other homework assignments we may need to print). However, some of us, including myself, are in writing classes. This semester, in my Structure of Fiction workshop class, I had to provide twenty copies each of two stories, both over ten pages. The amount of pages from those two assignments alone was probably around five hundred pages. If that exceeded my quota, based on five hundred sheets times five cents per page, that would cost me twenty five dollars. It would cost Clemson a lot less than that. And on top of that, Clemson wouldn’t really be paying that extra for each student who was going over the quota. For every student like me that needs to print five hundred pages, there are several more who only print around fifty pages or less per semester. One of my friends who is engineering student says he “printed thirty pages this semester, tops.” Sure, I could print stuff out under his or one of my other printing deficient friends’ CUID’s, but that’s pointless. There are so many students who won’t meet the three hundred and fifty sheet quota, but some of us need it.
Tuition is another issue entirely, but I have to bring it up here. I pay thousands of dollars (and it’s going up every year) each semester to take classes here and earn a degree. When it comes down to it, that’s the main reason we’re all here, right? I mean I know everyone (teachers, students, administrators) have other things on their agendas, but the whole point of the University (in theory) is to educate students. For my learning experience, sometimes I have to print things. My roommate, who is a Communication Studies major, may even print more things than me (if you can believe it). And although I haven’t spent the time to conduct a survey or anything, I imagine history students and foreign language students probably have a lot of papers or supplementary reading they may need to print out as well. Anyway, I digress. You get it, we have to print stuff. But the point I’m trying to make is that we pay a lot of money for an education, and while we expect that our money goes to other University maintenance, I think that our education and the things we need to get it should be the top priority. Landscaping should be sacrificed, not my learning experience.
Maybe I should talk a little bit about Clemson’s perspective on the issue. I can understand why campus maintenance is important, and I think we can all agree that we don’t want to attend a school with a rundown campus. Like I said before, I’m glad I go to a school that makes this a priority, but only to a point. If I’m going to school, I want my education to be the first priority.
Also, in the e-mail, the growing number of pages being printed was discussed. I guess they got three hundred and fifty pages by doing some kind of average, and they are trying to control printing growth more than anything. That I can understand – that they don’t need the number to keep growing. But again, I need extra pages, and other students will have too many pages. Somehow, that doesn’t balance. I’m not entirely sure how to cap the page growth without imposing a limit on each individual student, but what I would suggest is a different limit based on your major. If they did their printing averages based on major instead of the student body as a whole, it would be more accurate to the students’ needs and more conducive to a good learning experience. Although this may bother some students, I think it would be an option for Clemson to put a cap on the amount of pages printed and try to suit students’ needs more appropriately.
The budget, of course, is Clemson’s main issue. It may not matter as much to
them how they cap the amount of pages printed as long as they cap it in some way. But here
was the thing to me that I found a little ridiculous: “Clemson has adopted a new policy aimed
at saving money, reducing wasted paper and making printing in public campus labs more
efficient. Uniprint from Pharos Systems has been awarded the contract for software that will
allow the university to implement this policy.” So they want to save money, but to implement
this on campus they will have to buy software and pay for tech support to do so. It may still
save money, but it just doesn’t seem worth it to me.
Although the Budget Crisis and saving paper are legitimate concerns on Clemson’s
part, I think they need to consider our education first. Clemson should make sacrifices in
other areas before they sacrifice education related tools. We pay good money to get a good
education, and we deserve to get that here. Although paying extra money may not directly
influence the quality of my education, there must be a better way to do this. I’m sure my
friends would be glad to let me use some of their pages if I need extra, but that’s not the point.
I don’t think it should have to come to that. Clemson students deserve to have the tools they
need to complete their school work, especially for how much tuition and fees we pay.
