Conservation and CCI: Reduced ‘free’ CCI printing will discourage waste

The revelation that students cut back on Carolina Computing Initiative printing after this year’s cost increase may sound like another woeful consequence of budget cuts. But this development should be applauded, since higher printing costs encourage students to be more thoughtful about their paper use and allows the University to direct that money toward other initiatives.

CCI printing is an invaluable resource for many students, but students’ casual attitude toward printing lacks the consideration they would give if the printing money were coming directly from their pockets.

But students do pay for it, since Information Technology Services is predominantly funded by student fees.

Beginning this fall, ITS increased the price per sheet at CCI printers from five cents to 10 cents, while holding students’ printing allotment steady at $40, in effect cutting the number of sheets students can print in half, to 400 per semester.

The $40 set aside for printing money is not derived from a specific portion of the ITS fee. Instead, ITS must allocate the $228 per student in fees it receives across all its initiatives. It determines the printing allotment based on its estimate of the average student’s printing needs.

Last semester, 30,000 students received a printing allotment of 400 pages, and fewer than 7 percent of these students exceeded the free allocation.

The widespread notion that CCI printing is “free” is pernicious because it facilitates wasteful printing among students. (We all know someone guilty of printing every single PowerPoint slide to review just once before an exam).

Much like unused meals allow Carolina Dining Services to charge less per meal, the 25 percent of students who don’t print anything at all allow the average allocation to be as high as it is. Were it not for this irregularity, the number of pages allowed would be even lower.

In the aggregate, the total sheets printed decreased to 5 million last semester from a long-term average of 7.5 million, a 33 percent reduction.

Even students who aren’t especially environmentally-minded should applaud this cutback, since the money ITS saves can be put to uses that benefit more students.

For instance, funding for the Undergraduate Library renovations came from the ITS budget — that is, the same budget that supports CCI printing. They’ve also launched Virtual Labs, which enables students to use statistical and design programs on their laptops without having to go to a computer lab.

ITS has done a service to the environment by implementing policies that discourage waste, while also benefitting students by ensuring that funds are left for other important initiatives.