At OIT cluster printers across campus, the pages pile up like leaves in the fall: essay drafts, half-completed problem sets, course readings and surplus flyers. They lie there, abandoned, a reminder of Princeton's insatiable appetite for printing. And who could blame us? At a whopping cost of zilch, we are tempted to print whether we need to or not. The result is backlogged, jammed and broken printers — and reams upon reams of wasted paper.
Responding to widespread frustration with campus printing facilities, the USG has proposed a new system that would inform students which printers are available and which are suffering from "PC Load Letter." This may help avoid the notorious dash across campus minutes before a paper is due, but the USG's proposal will only mask the real problem here: It is time that undergraduates were reminded that Princeton's "free" printing does not come without a cost.
Our excessive consumption of paper wastes energy and trees and comes back to students in the form of higher tuition and manpower hours spent trying to fix the printers. Environmental organizations on campus have already persuaded the University to purchase 100 percent recycled paper. While maintaining the tradition of free printing, Princeton should allot each student a fixed number of pages per semester. That would force everyone to at least consider whether they really need to print yet another draft of their thesis. Such a system would follow the model recently adopted by Duke, which allows students to extend their printing quota if they have reason to churn out more pages. And, of course, students could always use their own printers.
A printing quota would cut down on needless waste and reduce the backlog at busy campus printers in Firestone Library and the Frist Campus Center. The USG should get behind this solution now, before a helplessly jammed printer falls victim to an "Office Space"-style beating.
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