| Resistance Officer | Section | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Chrzanowski | chrz4376@KU | A Section | Webpage Crusader |
| Jake Harris | harr1292@KU | A Section | Facilities Maintainer |
| Sean Johnson | john2295@KU | B Section | Facilities Maintainer |
| Alexzandria Musson | muss3730@KU | B Section | Operations |
TL;DR Printing at Kettering University is time consuming and inefficient. It used to be adequate and usable, but the new changes have made it a chore to print, and serves no purpose.
The resistance has begun.
For too long, Kettering students have been oppressed by administration's arbitrary decisions. For too long students have had to sit idly by while administration perverts our tuition money.
Disclaimer: I am not an IT staff member, just a CS student This may be entirely inaccurate; however, I feel like it's a fair approximation.
As far as I can tell, Kettering University's printing used to be sane. There was a single CUPS server that network printers hooked up to, and IT ensured it worked. In those days, the only student responsibility was to hook up their device to that CUPS server once. That was it!
All of that CUPS stuff still exists; however, a middle layer (read: Shovelware) was installed to vacuum up jobs that were submitted to CUPS into the GoPrint system. Everyone else knows the rest, you now have to login to a KUCloud compatible machine to do the rest.
As of writing (Jan 13, 2019) it is impossible to
Taking a look at the email students received on January 7th, it seems that the school is trying to demonstrate the need to reduce paper use.
The results of this effort were revealing. For example, during the summer term of 2018, 85% of students printed fewer than 250 pages, and 92% of students printed 300 pages or less. This level of use would seem appropriate, and the bulk of this activity was course related. However, the remaining 8% of students printed on average over 500 pages each with a number exceeding 2000 pages, much of which was personal and not university related. To put the cumulative impact of this use in perspective, last year student printing alone consumed almost 150 cartons of paper (1,500 reams or 750,000 sheets) and hundreds of pounds of toner. In comparison, a stack of 1,500 reams would stand 250 feet tall, or 3.5 times the height of the Bell Tower. - Student Life
These reasons are a FARCE.
The economic avenue is fairly clear. "We're using too much paper, it costs too much, how can we eliminate its use?" Just doing some KetteringBuilt™, back of the napkin math, we can easily see that last year student printing consumed about 750,000 sheets of paper. Assuming the university doesn't waste money, they probably purchase regular, 8.5 x 11in paper in bulk. A quick Google search, shows that ~500 sheets of paper can be purchased for around $3, excluding some shipping overhead. This is 6 tenths of a cent per sheet. According to these numbers, the overall printing cost for students last year was $4,500.00, a mere fraction of a single student's yearly tuition.
Furthermore, a GoPrint license, yearly service contract, or whatever, also costs the university money. Not only that, but an in house IT staff member now needs to divert their already limited time to managing a new piece of infrastructure that wasn't previously broken.
Additionally, the school provides no incentive for students to print double sided. In fact, GoPrint as it currently stands charges money from a student based on electronic page count instead of physical page count. This means there is no economic incentive for students to print double sided, only an environmental one.
Similarly, the school could argue that we should save paper for environmental reasons. This could be the case; however, it would appear that the school isn't entirely focused on this goal. Last week, Sunrise Cafe only had Styrofoam cups and paper plates available for students. If you're planning on a dishwasher breaking, possibly purchasing a second would avoid this. Campus safety frequently idles cars in the front of Campus Center. Obviously, this is a harmful activity. And to top it off, the computers in various computer labs on campus don't even enter sleep mode, and remain on at full blast 24/7.
The email from student life seemed to state that personal printing is now forbidden. Reading the email sent out last week, I couldn't help but wonder how the school determined what was personal and what wasn't? Is a résumé personal use? I should hope not as most freshmen probably need around 30-40 copies of theirs for a successful job fair. Do club event fliers count as personal? I should hope it is, as club activities are a core piece of student life here on campus.
The decision to limit students to 250 pages also seems somewhat strange. This number represents the amount of pages used by 85% of the student body. If all decisions were made based on this percentage, one could argue that women's bathrooms should be removed as undergraduate women constitute only 15% of the student body.
Interestingly enough, that 750,000 sheet limit was influenced by the university pressuring departments as a whole to print less paper. Instead of changing teaching style or requirements, many professors told their students to go and print a copy for themselves. Making these sweeping changes without collecting adequate data is a BIG MISTAKE for an engineering focused university, like Kettering.
While I think most people can agree that anything above 500 pages is probably egregious and unnecessary, there are times when academic projects exceed the reasonable. See unreasonable professors, thesis projects, capstones, etc.
I can continue to pick holes at university actions like any other student. It's easy because we don't know what goes on behind the scenes. But nothing will happen unless we take action.
Therefore, the #resistgoprint movement has acquired a Brother MFCL2710DN printer, paper, and ink required for a small, independent, student funded printing system. We currently have approx. 5000 pages, and donations are welcome. Ideally, resistance members believe the following are good steps to show management how deep the GoPrint thorns dig:
You can send all questions, comments, or concerns about related material to chrz4376@kettering.edu and you should get a response within a few days. Please note, I am not the only student with these grievances; however, I'm probably the only one willing to push my thoughts in an easily accessible, performant webpage. Please reach out to me if you are a pro-GoPrint student