The printer purrs as the 50 page article your professor posted on Moodle is slowly churned out. Your GAC printing account quickly depleted, you walk back to your study area to begin reading. What happened to the good old days when printing was free at Gustavus?

I understand that Gustavus and the rest of the world are trying to be more earth friendly and want to go green, but at what cost to students? We pay over $40,000 a year to get an education here and yet we are now being charged to print when we are already paying thousands of dollars for classes and on top of that, an outrageous amount of money for textbooks.

More professors are placing their articles on Moodle for students to read for their classes, but many students struggle with actively engaging in the text while reading it online. How are we supposed to actively engage in the material, take notes on the copy of the article and highlight portions we want to talk about in class without a physical copy of the article in class (which many professors require you to bring for their class).

Even if you choose to print on both sides of a page, you are charged for printing two sheets. How does that motivate students to save paper if they will be charged the same amount as printing single sided. Multiple drafts are often required for papers and sometimes professors even want the full articles you used as a source turned in with the final draft of a paper.

Some majors also are more apt to have to print numerous pages for projects, lesson plans or drafts of a senior thesis. An example of this is the communications studies major. It is difficult for professors to find a whole textbook to address everything they need to teach in the course and they rely heavily on using articles from various sources in an attempt to reduce the need for students to buy textbooks. Their valiant efforts to save poor college students money may be worthless now with the printing regulations, because printing off all of the articles required for a communications studies class may cost more than a textbook.

Another issue with the new Gustavus printing policy is that when you release a print job everyone can see what you are printing off. This could easily become a privacy issue because other students could access personal information. There is also the issue with how Gustavus chooses to allocate its funds. Walking around campus on move-in day made me feel so happy to be able to attend this school, and as I walked into the Marketplace I noticed the snazzy, new flatscreen TV that displays announcements along with the new flatscreen TV placed in Lund, but I wonder were they really necessary to add to our campus, especially in the time of this economic crisis? I think that Gustavus needs to reevaluate how it allocates its money and what is chooses to support with it.