I want to applaud the reasonable steps GW’s Center for Academic Technologies is taking to control the voluminous amounts of waste expended at printer labs. A reasonable quota allowing users the ability to print – free of charge – legitimate materials is a long overdue step that is worthy of our support.

The least important reason is the money being wasted. A mere 7 percent of users takes up 50 percent of printing resources! It is unreasonable to expect us to pay for that, much less wait for this vast sum of documents to finish printing. It doesn’t take much to figure out who is paying for all of this – the extra expenses are certainly not coming out of GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg’s salary.

A far more important reason is environment and waste. It’s immoral and irresponsible to use this volume of paper when most printouts finds their way to the trash. A reasonable quota like this one will discourage such waste.

My support is contingent on the reasonable quota system CATs has implemented. At neighboring American University, they use – and charge for – printer cards. We should be able to expect to print necessary materials free of charge.

This move supports education and the environment. Kudos to CATs for finding this balance!
-John Donaldson
Ph.D. student, political science