Millar Library plays host to a familiar sight: a full computer lab, complete with the sounds of keyboards clicking, muffled pop songs coming out of someone’s headphones and the voices of people either pleading to all that’s holy that the printer surrenders their assignment or calmly informing the help desk that printer two is, of all things, printing off six copies of a kid-friendly version of the Old Testament.
For the most part, though, printing isn’t a particularly stressful thing at Portland State. As long as students have money in their printing account and enough time to wait in case someone accidentally sends a 700-page document to the printer (tsk, tsk!), the system seems to work.
Well, for the students, anyway. The school sees it a little differently.
Apparently, PSU has jumped on the bandwagon and decided to start monitoring and delaying printing for the sake of sustainability. It’s not as scary as it sounds; there isn’t going to be someone scanning every document sent to the printer for hints of a widespread conspiracy or anything. But it could be a little inconvenient, if nothing else, and students should start preparing now.
Basically, PSU has decided to make printing work on the “hold and release” cycle. Using software called PaperCut, the school will be cutting down on documents printed in error or left in the printers without being picked up.
Students printing from PSU computers will order the printing as usual. After all documents have been sent to the printer, students must access a kiosk adjacent to said printer. In order to release the documents in the queue, students must input their login information and confirm that they really do want those documents printed. Once confirmed, the balance is removed from students’ printing accounts, and they’re free to pick up the papers and go.
For a person who’s in a hurry, this could be frustrating. This is particularly true if there’s a line at the printer and every single person there has to put in their information to complete the work. Moreover, if there’s a problem with the printer, students likely won’t know until they’ve confirmed their print job, making for even more frustration.
It is a minor inconvenience, to say the least. But it does align with PSU’s sustainability goals and the Climate Action Plan.
It’s not necessarily a bad system. Granted, the software keeps records of everything printed, which is a little scary (not that we’re not used to that—Siri, anyone?), but it’s not going to keep track of the content. It just looks at print job names and sizes and logs the information for future reference.
And it has proven itself effective, at least in the initial testing phase here at PSU. In one month, the Office of Information Technology claims that the new “hold and release” system in just one lab reduced the amount of wasted paper from printing by approximately 10,000 sheets. It also estimates the new system helped prevent more than 100 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.
There are, of course, a few issues with the new system. The biggest of these seems to be the amount of time for which the print job stays in the queue. The print jobs are saved for up to one hour before they’re deleted, which means that for students taking advantage of the wireless printing—a way to print directly from your laptop—the clock is definitely ticking to get to the appropriate lab on time.
For students faced with login issues, the frustration is twofold. Not only is it necessary to first log in to the PSU servers themselves, the student must go through all this again at the printer. Luckily, login issues are few and far between, so this shouldn’t be too big a problem.
So the real question becomes: Is what’s best for the school in this situation really what’s best for the students?
PSU students do value sustainability, and the school’s reputation is important to the students themselves. Not to mention that in the long run, this program should save money for the school. And despite the fact that the school will never let that result in lower tuition for the students, it could help with individual students’ printing balances, as they wouldn’t pay for pages that are not picked up.
So the switch over to PaperCut’s “hold and release” program (scheduled to be installed in the library and Broadway computer labs) should be positive overall. It might slow students down at first, but they’ll adjust. And the savings should be worth it.
Quick printing might be a thing of the past, but if it costs less, we can’t really complain.