It's the last day of the second week of school and, so far, it's going pretty well. It's been a relatively calm couple of weeks if you take out the never ending slew of meetings, people trying to run me over on bikes and freshman who don't know what country they're in.
One thing about the past week I didn't expect came in the form of a word: "Print." I've heard more about print, printing, things being printed and prints than I ever want to hear again. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with my two Industry and Technology Graphic Arts classes (one of which is screen printing, there it is again) but the unexpected source comes from the library.
"University Libraries Announce Continuance of 'Free' Printing Services."
Try to figure that one out without any context. Does it mean that printing on campus is totally free? Does it mean that it's free, but only like that pizza they hand out with credit cards in the Village is free? Does it mean the long-awaited emancipation of printing on campus has finally come?
None of the above. It means you can print 1,000 pages on campus before the university will start charging 5 cents a page. I wasn't expecting to hear much passion from students this early in the semester, and I certainly couldn't fathom it would be about printing. I've heard it from the people I've talked to, the people commenting on bsudailynews.com and random people walking around campus.
Unfortunately, most of the people are upset about the 1,000-page limit the university put in place. But there's no good reason anyone should be printing more than 1,000 pages of anything in today's world.I've been in classes where printing is required. The professor might assign papers or projects that involve printed materials. Most of the time, however, these requirements could be eliminated with the proper use of technology.
Most of the people I talked to were concerned about printing papers to hand in to their professors. A comment on bsudailynews.com came from an English major who was concerned about the very same thing. E-mail is an easy solution for this problem.
Other classes might require projects to be printed in some way or another. Maybe you have to print off some handouts so students can follow along during a presentation. That's easily solved with PowerPoint, Keynote or any other program that puts presentations together.
Professors can also use digital presentations to cut down on printing. I've been in a few classes where the handouts throughout the semester require almost an entire ream of paper per student. Why not post everything electronically on Blackboard?
There are surely a few cases where printed materials are necessary, but all other situations have a viable and easy digital substitute. Most students are already taking advantage of the technology they've used all their lives. Most professors, on the other hand, require printed papers, don't allow laptops in class and generally encourage the haphazard use of printed materials, regardless of whether they're doing it consciously or not.
Ball State wants to be on the cutting edge of technology, but that's not showing in the habits of students and professors who automatically resort to using printed materials. After printing more than 6.2 million pages campuswide last year, the only edge Ball State is close to is that of a chainsaw, cutting down trees.
This column is never going to be printed. Maybe someday we'll be able to say that about nearly everything at Ball State. Then we can take care of all those maniacal cyclists and everything will be fine.
Write to Logan at lmbraman@bsu.edu
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