The Student Assembly established a committee to investigate the costs and accessibility of printing on campus in a resolution passed on Thursday. The vote followed the publishing of an S.A. report indicating that 91 percent of students find Net-Print to be expensive.
In order to properly understand student opinion on the current Net-Print system, the S.A. surveyed 641 undergraduate students online through the S.A. mailing list and different Cornell Facebook groups, said the Cornell Printing Report.
Net-Print service is Cornell’s primary resource for student printing. As a “university service center,” Net-Print is not subsidized by Cornell, and therefore charges 9 cents for one side of a typical black-and-white page and 20 to 50 cents per color page according to Cornell’s IT Services.
The initiative was proposed and is being executed by Jaewon Sim ’21, freshman representative at-large.
“The report is meant to serve as the rationale for the establishment of the Net-Print Task Force. As the survey results indicate, Cornell students generally agree that something needs to be done with the Net-Print system, but making changes to printing policies is a complicated issue,” Sim said.
The S.A. Task Force on Net-Print System Reform would focus particularly on NetPrint’s “pricing scheme, accessibility and environmental sustainability,” according to Sim and S.A. President Jung Won Kim ’18. The ad-hoc committee will work with the Residential Student Congress to investigate Net-Print.
“We want to reduce student financial burden by developing a revised pricing structure for Net-Print printing fees by researching measures such as lowering the price of duplex printing, which also improves environmental sustainability, or introducing a limited amount of free printing credits for all undergraduate students,” Sim said.
Kim praised the work done by the S.A. thus far.
“I’m very impressed by the progress that has been made,” he said. “Within a few months we already gathered a lot of student input and researched school policy on NetPrint pricing and operations. I really can’t overstate Jaewon’s leadership in this endeavor – it is rare for representatives, let alone a freshman representative, to make big strides on practical initiatives in such short time frame.”