Starting next October, undergraduate students will receive about 200 pages of free printing every calendar year under a unified printing system, Cornell IT told the Student Assembly on Thursday.
Depending on how many color or black and white pages each student prints, the exact number of free printing pages will vary, said Cornell IT manager of collaboration and utility services Kourtney Plotzker. However, based on current estimates of students’ printing behavior, 200 pages will be enough for the majority of students, according to Plotzker.
On the student side, the printing experience will have “no major changes,” Plotzker said. Students will still print by logging into PaperCut and swiping their ID at the printer.
Prices for black and white and color printing will also decrease across the board. The price of black and white printing currently varies across printers, costing 9 cents to 30 cents per page, while color printing costs 25 to 30 cents per page. Under the new changes, black and white printing would cost 7 cents for the first page and 6 cents for every page after the first. Color pages would cost 23 cents for the first page and 22 cents for every following page.
Free printing allocations and lowering printing costs are just two parts of the Student Printing Service Project, a joint effort by Cornell IT and the Student Assembly Task Force on Net-Print System Reform.
Jaewon Sim ’21, S.A. vice president for internal relations and task force co-chair, spearheaded the free printing initiative, making it a hallmark of his time on the Assembly.
“I’m really glad that we’ve gotten to the point where we are able to share the accomplishments that we’ve made,” Sim told The Sun in an interview.
For Sim, who first campaigned on the promise of free printing during his freshman year election to the S.A. in 2017, the new printing allocations is the culmination of two years’ work on S.A.
“This was a two-year-long process, so I first started this when I was a freshman and we weren’t really sure … how many pages or what kind of deal we were gonna get, and I’m really glad this is a number that will meet most people’s printing requirements.”
Sim also hopes to extend free printing to graduate students, although discussions are still underway.
“We’re hoping that will alleviate students’ financial burden … so that every single student on campus can benefit from it,” said Sim.
Other aspects of the printing project include replacing older printers for newer, more environmentally friendly models, beginning with the most popular printers in places like Olin and Uris Library. The old printers will be donated to the Cornell Prison Education Program, pending negotiations, said Sim.
S.A. also discussed resolutions to establish formal committee-administrator relationships, to form an ad-hoc committee to discuss student absence policy reform, to standardize recruitment for S.A. executive office and to make changes to the Student Assembly Charter in anticipation of the Fall 2019 byline funding cycle.