Despite past troubles, the iPrint project is expected to premiere on campus by next year and a pilot program is still slated for next semester, UB officials announced at Wednesday's Faculty Senate Executive Committee meeting.
iPrint, originally scheduled to begin its pilot program last summer, allows each student, faculty and staff member to print 650 pages each semester and an additional 200 pages during the semester session. The new print-management system is designed to allocate printing resources to students in order to give them fair access while controlling waste and abuse of the service.
According to Rick Lesniak, director of academic services for CIT, UB's printing costs have continued to rise at an alarming rate. During the 2003-2004 academic year, the university spent $575,000 in paper and toner alone.
"We have actually looked at students' printing history and seen how much students have printed and which class they belonged to. We then came up with this allocation for students," Lesniak said.
If students surpass their semester limit, they will have to pay for additional printouts. Currently, prices are set at 5 cents for single-sided pages and 8 cents for double-sided printing. But for non-UB personnel, it will cost 10 cents for single-sided pages, and 20 cents for double-sided printing.
Students can either bill these costs to their student account or pay for them on the spot with Campus Cash. For non-UB personnel, however, a special printing card will be required.
iPrint will enter a trial run in the computing sites at Lockwood Library and Diefendorf Hall. This trial will determine if the program should be enforced throughout the campus.
Users' page-allocation balances will be monitored carefully in order to examine how the system will work and what changes must be made in order for iPrint to run efficiently.
"We are working on iPrint to make it work well in Lockwood Library and that's today's plan," said Linda Kingsbury, associate director of student access academic services for CIT.
Some students say they are not in favor of the program's stipulation requiring them to pay extra if they go over the limit.
"I think we pay enough for tuition already and shouldn't have to pay for printing notes to succeed at UB," said Michelle Sedar, a freshman pharmacy major.
"Tuition and fees should cover these costs, especially for rising tuition each year," said Jonathan Seage, a sophomore business major. "There will be many upset UB students if we do begin to get charged for school-related printouts."
Other believe the program is a good step to limit the misuse of paper, high costs of printing and ludicrous waiting time when printing in the libraries.
"I can understand why UB has to charge us for these printouts," said Dan Forte, a freshman communication major. "First of all, ink and paper is really expensive. I can understand why people would think our tuition should cover this, and it does. But 1,500 pages a year is a lot, especially when most students have computers and printers in their own rooms."
Forte added that extra costs would stop people front printing pointless pages.
"Nothing is worse than having to wait four hours to print out two pages," he said.
The iPrint project will most likely take effect across both campuses in fall 2006 if the trial at the Lockwood Library and Diefendorf is a success and there are no major malfunctions.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
