By Kevin Hong

hongze@grinnell.edu

Grinnell College changed its printing system and now students have to wave their p-card before a scanner for any printing in order to cut down on the amount of waste that the college produces each year.

“It’s been a long process and the discussion has been on its way for years. As you have seen, they put all the scanners up on all the printers,” said SGA President Gabe Schechter. “Last semester, the College has tried out a couple of printers just to see how the system works.”

SGA and Information Technology Services hoped that simply changing the way students print would result in a cut in how much they print. The idea is that if people have to swipe their p-card to get their papers printed, then they’ll be more conscious of how much paper they’re using. However, the fact that the system was installed means that there are potential possibilities that the College may charge the students, a concern to many students.

“Right now, they’re looking at the best way to track the amount of paper we use because they had no data how much paper we print at each station,” Schechter said. With the new machines, we’ll be able to track the printing more easily and at the same time hopefully reducing the amount of paper we use.”

Holden Bale ’11, former Vice President of Student Affairs and member of the ITS Advisory Committee, is confident that paying for printing is still far off.

“I think paying for printing goes against our values as an institution.” said Bale. “It’s about freedom of information to a certain extent. We value ourselves as being able to bring in diverse groups of students socio-economically, and if you are charging for printing, that would be one more barrier and financial aid would have to fix that barrier, since we are need-blind. So you need to provide the students money who cannot afford to print. Thus you have to figure how much money you give them and the figuring out is going to cost a lot.”

Schechter also thinks that the final confirmation step could make people more responsible for their printing.

“If you do not have the step, people will just click print and they’ll forget about it,” Schechter said. ”Hopefully, we can avoid charging people to print in the future.”