Illustration by Cameron Hubbard
College campuses are places of personal growth, learning and high-volume printing. Texas State is no exception. At an enrollment of nearly 39,000 students, the campus needs more than just the current six buildings with SendNPrint access.
Students enrolled full-time pay $240 per semester for a computer service fee. Assuming 38,500 students are enrolled full-time each academic year, Texas State receives $18,480,000 for classroom technology, academic computer labs and Wi-Fi.
At the start of each semester, students have a $25 credit for printing that does not roll-over to the next semester. Despite the ability to print 2,500 pages per semester, students are unable to take advantage because of the lack of printing locations. If a building does have a SendNPrint location, chances are the printers are broken, jammed or the keyboard has disappeared from the screen, forcing students to line up between class times and hastily print before rushing to their next class.
Local apartments cater to students, charging astronomically high rent and getting away with it by offering students the same services their tuition already covers, including printers and computer labs. Students find themselves walking or driving to apartments in the area just to use printers because Texas State’s printing locations are unreliable and hard to come by.
Conversely, other students could feel the campus has plenty of printers, pointing out the library has several SendNPrint locations on floors one through seven. Those who are happy with the number of working printers at Texas State believe students who know they need to print something for a class should ensure enough time to find a working printer.
Still, more than half of the printers on campus are in Alkek and many students do not go near Alkek during their school day. Upperclassmen are the most affected by this, partly because they remain mostly in their major building and partly because older students typically need to print more than those taking core-curriculum classes.
College campuses are places of immense personal growth and expansion of thought. It would be a tragedy for students to miss out on opportunities of learning due to a perceived lack of school funds, time or printers. The problem is easily remedied: Texas State needs to buckle down, fix the broken printers and order more for the buildings without sufficient printing services.
– Naomi Wick is a journalism senior