You have 10 minutes before class to print out your essay. You wait in line on O’Neill Library’s third floor, press Command+P on your laptop, and use your balance of $3.09 to get a physical copy of your double-spaced hard work.
Except your 10 double-sided pages display as 100 on the monitor, and your 30-cent tab is now $3.00. And you can’t figure out how to print the correct amount.
Your eyes wander to the minuscule sign on the corner of the desktop:
“Please verify how many pages you’re printing… The printers sometimes square the amount.”
Your balance reaches $0.09, you have a novel’s worth of essays, and now you’re late to class.
You’d think that in the midst of the digital age, printing would have become obsolete. With practically every student owning a laptop and submitting assignments via Canvas, perhaps the trees could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Yet, more and more professors ask students to bring physical copies of their readings and assignments to class. This only serves to spotlight one of Boston College’s most tedious and annoying issues: printing.
There is a laundry list of grievances related to printing at BC: the price tags on each page, sparsely available printers, the occasional lack of ink at some, and the permanent lack of staplers at others.
If students already cough up a nearly six-figure tuition, an additional $15 every semester for printers that don’t function properly feels a little insulting.
The thing is, BC is well aware of its printing drama. They’ve gone out of their way to print out passive-aggressive little signs for each desktop (they’re even laminated), and yet the issue remains unsolved.
If a $3 squaring mishap happens five times, you’re flat broke in printing money. And if you pull out your card to add more, the minimum deposit of Eagle Bucks is $20. That’s $35 in one semester spent on printing.
Not only do the issues spread far and wide, but so do the printers themselves. If you need to print something quickly, you might have to walk across campus to the nearest functioning printer. And if you need it in color, there are only two printers, both in O’Neill.
Now, you might be thinking: “Guys, printing supplies are really expensive, that’s probably why there are so few of them.” You would be right, but we also attend a university with a $4.3 billion endowment, and fixing printing deserves some of those resources.
Additionally, while some students spend their entire printing budget just a month into the semester, their peers may never touch it. If they know they will not be using it throughout the semester, students should be able to transfer their printing money to their peers. There is no reason for them to hold onto this forced, prepaid purchase.
BC allows students to pay for other amenities, like laundry, with a debit or credit card—it makes no sense that printing is not the same way.
Students should not have to pay in advance for a service they might not even use. Some may prefer to read hard copies, so they choose to print more. Other students may work exclusively on iPads. If BC is to make students pay for printing, they should at least let students pay to fit their needs.
Although this might seem inconsequential, like printer pages, the problems add up. During midterm or finals season, a missing stapler can feel like the final straw.
Printing should not be added to students’ list of worries, especially when the problems have simple and well-funded solutions.
