At the beginning of each fall and spring semester RCS users are allocated $12.50 for black & white printing on RCS public printers. All color printing and any black & white printing exceeding the $12.50 allocation is charged to a bursar account and leftover allocation at the end of each semester disappears—it does not carry over to the next semester.
Most, if not all, black & white RCS public printers print on 8.5x11 paper at a resolution of 600 dots per inch (dpi) at a cost of two cents per job and eight cents per page. These printers are spread around RPI—approximately 30 in buildings on academic campus, two in the Student Union, and eight in the dorms. There are also four color printers in various academic buildings and 15 printers of every size, shape, and type you could ever want in the VCC.
Currently, 100 percent of first year residence halls (Barton, Bray, Crockett, Cary, Hall, and Nason) are equipped with an RCS “public” printer. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for over 80 percent of non-first year or mixed residence facilities. Warren Hall and BARH both have printers; residents of Davison, Sharp, Nugent, North, E-Complex, the Quad, Stacwyck, the RAHPs, and Colonie Apartments, however, are all forced to travel to the distant printing paradise of the VCC, to Warren Hall or the Student Union to use one of the three RCS public printers not on academic campus that isn’t secured exclusively for the residents of a particular building. If the two Union printers fail you or you want to print in color after hours you’re probably in for a long, cold, dark, and lonely walk to the VCC.
Students are not alone in their printing related problems. Though exact numbers were not available at press time, at a September Student Senate meeting, Derek Murawsky, chair of the Technology Affairs Committee, estimated that “for every ten jobs that are sent to a printer, there’s something like 50 times the amount of paper missing from printers and the printing program right now is operating at a huge deficit.”
Presumably in response to such issues and in a never-ending quest to provide the best printing services possible to the campus, the Division of the Chief Information Officer (DotCIO), and more specifically, John Bradley, Kent Johnson, and the rest of the team from Information Technologies Infrastructure (ITI.CIO), is investigating ways to improve printing services at RPI, particularly on the non-academic campus. Some of the ideas floating around include consolidating printing into print centers in key locations such as the Union, improving individual printer security, and making current printers more accessible.
Whether you love, hate, or just have a cool idea about how to improve the current printing services on academic campus, at the Union, or in the dorms, you should submit your input to the appropriate party immediately. For RPI print services ideas or concerns you can contact Director of ITI.CIO John Bradley by e-mail at bradlj@rpi.edu or by phone at 276-8153.
