The Rice Thresher

Location: http://the.ricethresher.org/news/2004/01/23/owlnet_printer_prices_increase_architecture_posters

January 23, 2004 > News > Owlnet printer prices increase

Owlnet printer prices increase

By April Goldman | Thresher staff

This semester there may be fewer color posters announcing every party on campus.

Printing charges on Owlnet printers increased at the beginning of the semester. All printers now cost an extra cent per page except for the printers in Mudd 109, which cost 50 percent more per page. In addition, plotter jobs now cost three dollars per linear foot, an increase from a flat rate of three dollars per job.

Director of Educational Technology/Network Infrastructure William Deigaard (Wiess ‘93) said the increased prices are necessary to prevent the Owlnet printing operation from running a deficit as it has the past two years. He said the deficit was caused by excessively low printing prices and rising costs for printer maintenance and supplies.

“The average deficit per year was over $10,000,” Deigaard said. “We operated at a loss for about two years and determined we could no longer do so.”

Deigaard said that when his department buys a new printer, it is difficult to determine how much to charge per page. He said the department set prices for printing on the plotter printers far too low.

“Until you have actual uses, you don’t really know what your [supplies] costs are and your printer maintenance costs are,” he said. “We priced the plotter printers unbelievably low. That’s where we’ve probably lost most of the money.”

The price change has caused dissatisfaction among students in the architecture department. Architecture students use the plotter printers multiple times per semester for projects.

Lovett College junior Lindsey Brigati, an architecture student, said she thinks the increase in printing prices is excessive compared to the prices at other schools.

“The point of having printing on campus is to make things easier for [the students],” Brigati said. “At Harvard, a 3-foot-by-5-foot plotter job is only $5. At Rice, that job will now cost $15.”

Brigati helped circulate a petition in the architecture department against the printing price increase. She said she is uncertain when the petition will be given to Rice staff.

Sid Richardson College senior Andrew Hamblin, also an architecture student, said he paid about $30 for plotter printing last semester and expects to pay about $160 this semester.

“For the average architecture major, the price increase translates to a 600 percent increase in printing costs, which is kind of absurd,” Hamblin said.

One architecture graduate student said architecture students can find better deals off campus.

“A&E Graphics Complex has a plotter that produces higher quality prints more quickly,” the student said. “With Rice printers costing almost as much, we may as well go to a private business and get better quality faster.”

“Plotter printing was ridiculously cheap before, but [the new price] is going to make our lives bitter itchy misery,” another architecture graduate student said. “With [the raised price] Rice might be profiting off the students, which would be unfair.”

Many students said they were concerned the IT department would make a profit from the increases in printing prices. However, Deigaard said the purpose of the increases is not to make a profit. Owlnet printing is self-sufficient, he said, and must bring in enough money to pay for its own expenses.

“People may not be aware that [Owlnet printing] pays its own way,” Deigaard said. “If we make any profit, we’ll put it into additional maintenance for printers. We’re not trying to make a profit here.”

End of article

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