A Green Week - inspired editorial
The Printing Epidemic
Jennifer Gregory
Issue date: 2/23/10 Section: Opinion
In light of Green Week and the upcoming 40th anniversary of Earth Day (April 22), I think now is a great time to address an extremely problematic issue on the Northeast campus: Printing.
Not having to pay for printing is one of the greatest perks about being a Holy Family student. It's one less thing to fit into our already tight budgets, which gives us one less thing to worry about. However, someone is worrying about it: Mother Nature.
In about the 20 minutes I spend on average in any of the computer labs on campus, I would calculate that at least 80 pages minimum spit out of the printer. Of these 80 pages, 60 of them are from a single student printing several copies of a massive PowerPoint file, fitting one slide on each page.
The first problem with this is, of course, the waste of ink and paper. PowerPoint gives the option to fit several slides onto one page, with the text still at a readable size. Secondly, printing that much at one time is a hindrance to the other students waiting in line for their one- or two-page assignments that either get delayed or cancelled in the print queue because of the long wait or the need to feed more paper into the printer.
Sometimes malfunctions do indeed happen and those 10 copies of that article you need for a presentation turn into 100 copies that do not stop printing. If all of your endeavors to get the printing to stop fail, call for the help of IT. It is much more eco-friendly, time, and cost-efficient instead of waiting a good ten minutes for all of that ink, paper, and toner to be wasted.
If this type of ignorance and misuse of the printers continues, paying for printing may be the university's only option in order to make people more aware of how much they are really using. So please, if you don't want another thing to burn a hole in your pocket, please be more conscious of what and how much you are printing on campus.
Not having to pay for printing is one of the greatest perks about being a Holy Family student. It's one less thing to fit into our already tight budgets, which gives us one less thing to worry about. However, someone is worrying about it: Mother Nature.
In about the 20 minutes I spend on average in any of the computer labs on campus, I would calculate that at least 80 pages minimum spit out of the printer. Of these 80 pages, 60 of them are from a single student printing several copies of a massive PowerPoint file, fitting one slide on each page.
The first problem with this is, of course, the waste of ink and paper. PowerPoint gives the option to fit several slides onto one page, with the text still at a readable size. Secondly, printing that much at one time is a hindrance to the other students waiting in line for their one- or two-page assignments that either get delayed or cancelled in the print queue because of the long wait or the need to feed more paper into the printer.
Sometimes malfunctions do indeed happen and those 10 copies of that article you need for a presentation turn into 100 copies that do not stop printing. If all of your endeavors to get the printing to stop fail, call for the help of IT. It is much more eco-friendly, time, and cost-efficient instead of waiting a good ten minutes for all of that ink, paper, and toner to be wasted.
If this type of ignorance and misuse of the printers continues, paying for printing may be the university's only option in order to make people more aware of how much they are really using. So please, if you don't want another thing to burn a hole in your pocket, please be more conscious of what and how much you are printing on campus.
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