On the entirety of Capital’s campus, there are only three color printers that students can access: one in the library, one in a lab, and one at the law school.
While this may seem like a sparse layout, information provided from the Information Technology (IT) department shows that it more than covers the demand for color printing on campus.
The color printer on the first floor of the library does the overwhelming majority of color printing on campus, printing over 12,000 pages over the first semester.
Although that number seems like a lot, this only makes up 2.1 percent of the total printing done on Capital’s campus, and falls well below the amount of other first floor library printers, which averaged over 67,000 pages each.
Director of IT, Annette Short, said, “I don’t see whole lot of … color printing and copying going on.”
Since they installed the color printers five years ago, Short said there have been no pushes from the student population, or student government, for additional color printers.
Short believes this may be because students are more aware of the environmental effect printing has and as such says she has progressively seen, “…that trend kind of going down with each generation.”
The printing stipend may also be a contributing factor, according to Short, as to why people are exhibiting more responsible printing habits.
Although, Short said they considered that and when looking at the numbers found that students seemed to be, ” …comfortable where they are.”
The world, specifically college has slowly been moving to more electronic means of relaying information. Many students seem to find it more convenient and efficient to send a paper online rather than printing it out like they might have done a few years ago.
Short has even heard from students that, “Everything is online and [they] don’t really need to print anything out … So I think that as more generations come in, they just get a little more conscious that ‘oh, I can pull this up online.'”
The one problem that the color printers have to face more than others is the aspect of maintenance. The IT department uses a third party to come and replace cartridges, and Short said that they consistently see those color cartridges need to be maintained more regularly than their black and white counterparts.
