Protestors print black pages to run up costs

Some students, angry that The University of Memphis took away part of their printing privileges over the summer, are protesting by printing out sheets of black ink to run up costs for The University of Memphis.

Starting this semester, students will still have $25 worth of printing paper, or 500 pages, at the beginning of each semester.

However, The U of M repossessed any accumulated funds from rollovers that were in students' accounts.

Senior music business major Matt White said he was taken by surprise when his printing account funds dropped from 3,700 pages.

"It makes me sick," White said. "It's bad human relations. They don't care about what we think, and you can tell because they just did it without telling us."

The new policy was announced on each student's Spectrum E-Portal page this summer, but a mass e-mail was never sent because most students just junk them during the summer, said information technology division CIO deputy Ellen Watson.

"We did not recommend this until we were sure there would be very few people impacted," Watson said. "Where there is an issue, we've been working with people to resolve it. Our goal was not to penalize anybody."

White said the change would have been easier if The U of M had made more of an effort to spread word about the new allowances.

"I wouldn't be so upset if they had used communication," he said. "To my knowledge, that was my accredited account money."

White compared the recent withdrawal of the paper, which had rolled over at the end of each semester - to an airline retracting someone's frequent flyer miles.

"I'm going to be mad if I use my $25," he said.

Watson said some students are confused about the change in policy, which was advocated by her department. Students are not given less money or less paper, she said; the paper is simply no longer rolled over into the student's account the following semester if it wasn't used.

She said there were two reasons for the policy change: Students would be less likely to waste paper if they had fewer pages to spare, and most students don't need that many pages anyway, she said.

"If you go into the labs, you still see lots and lots of trash paper," she said. "People just print, and a lot of it gets thrown away."

Before the IT division recommended the change to the dean's Technology Access Fee Committee, Sue Hull-Toye investigated current paper use. Watson said Hull-Toye found that more than 90 percent of the students never used their 500-page allocation in one semester.

She also found that fewer than 1 percent of the student body purchased additional paper after running out in one semester, Watson said.

"This never was about dollars. It's not dollars," she said. "The amount of paper is the same."

While The University stands to save money from this measure, Watson said the decision was more about going green.

In an effort to gather student input, the department met with leaders involved in the Student Government Association during the summer.

SGA President James Johnson said he was aware of the new policy but not of the meeting.

"The situation with paper is the way it was with Dining Dollar$," he said. " It was discussed but not in depth enough for students to have a say so."

Johnson said several student senators were drafting legislation to tweak the policy, possibly asking for a raise in the amount of paper or benefits for upperclassmen.

Sophomore biology major Emy Ufot said she doubted the SGA had the power to change the policy but said the amount of paper she has is more than enough.

"I don't think it's that bad," she said. "I think students can deal with it. And helping trees - it's for a good cause."

But others, like freshman criminal justice major Antoynio Batey, said they had to print lengthy reading assignments for their classes.

"It depends on the class you have, but as your classification goes up, the more classes you end up taking," he said. "So why shouldn't it rollover?"