The Observer, March 21, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 21
The Perils of Printing
Most of us have found ourselves entrenched in the hated and feared post-spring break depression. The six-week countdown to the freedom of summer sticks in our minds like a deranged misanthrope constantly pondering nuclear genocide. Due to this annoyance, I'm dropping the façade and just going for it. For four years, students' constant need to kill trees and print every class lecture slide three times over has caused moans and groans about public printing that not even Al Gore could shut up.
When I first arrived at Case, there were two ways most people could publicly print on campus: through Wade or Fribley, and in the Nord computer lab. Sure, there were other opportunities, such as the closed access, elitist PBL labs, but I could never figure out which person to please to gain clearance. Either way, both the Area Offices and Nord had more problems than Henry the VIII had wives.
Most of the breakdowns consisted of constant jamming, lack of toner, and lack of paper. This could ultimately be traced back to students printing what appeared to be actual novels on these public printers. You'd think the new Harry Potter book was just discovered online and everybody had to share it with the whole damn world. Both of these public printing locales claimed to have a quota on the number of prints you could produce, but they were enforced in the same way a group of cannibals enforces the outlaw of eating people.
Of course my first instinct is to fight The Man, so let's explore that a little. I do firmly believe in the tired and torn cliché, "If something is worth doing, do it right." Sure, things have gotten better, but still not very good. There must be plenty of IT and management people on this campus that Student Affairs and Co. could kidnap, lock in a room, and threaten with a diet of Rascal House pizza and TV marathons of Matlock in order to find some sort of solution to what must be common problems that hundreds of other communities have solved.
That being said, I have a simple recommendation to Student Affairs and Co.: follow the tired freaking cliché and note that it isn't being done right, and isn't worth doing. So stop doing it.
I feel that this statement will turn my esteemed peers into raging barbarians. I dare to take away their free printing, which they have come to rely on so much. I must note that this service is not one that students at this university are entitled to. There are plenty of other places the money set aside for this project could go, arguably having a greater and more positive impact on the students.
Students, most of us have abused this bonus for too long. This is one of the many things in life that we are, in fact, not entitled to. So, buy an effing printer. There are good printers for sale for approximately $50, half the price of a new text book. Ink cartridges sell for less than $10. Suck it up and just buy one. The Man, you are off the hook for the week. Go skip and lollygag around in the fields for a while, until I berate you again next week.
