Deans’ council may reconsider printing policy
Council claims new restrictions were not presented adequately

By Chrissy Braden
Staff Reporter

After student complaints and problems with the new printing policy, David Whillock, interim dean of the College of Communication, said he would try to put the issue back on the deans’ council meeting agenda after this week.

Whillock said the deans’ council approved the new policy for this semester with the understanding that the policy would only go into effect in the library.

“This wasn’t presented well to the deans’ council,” Whillock said. “When we began doing this, we had no idea what the impact would be.”

Chrissy Braden Staff Reporter Melinda Edwards, a junior speech communication major, scans her ID Wednesday before printing in the Mary Couts Burnett Library. After student complaints and problems with TCU’s new printing policy, David Whillock, interim dean of the College of Communication, said he would try to put the issue back on the deans’ council meeting agenda next week.

Students are worried about the 200-page limit being insufficient because some classes require more than 200 pages to be printed from campus computer labs, he said.

Robert Lusch, dean of the M.J. Neeley School of Business, said he has heard a lot of complaints from students, especially MBA students.

“It’s a critical issue,” Lusch said. “We may need a larger page limit, but how do we fund that?”

Whillock said he didn’t realize how much printing students were required to do for some classes.

“The limit needs to be increased from 200 pages if there are classes that require more,” Whillock said. “We tried to take care of one issue and started another one.”

Bill Senter, manager of technical services at Information Services, said a possible solution for students in classes that require a lot of printing is to credit their IDs with additional printouts based on which classes they are enrolled in.

“An option is manual intervention,” Senter said. “It would not be easy to implement, but the system would allow it.”

Amanda Emerson, a sophomore English major, said she has to print out a lot of essays and copies of poetry for her classes. She said the new policy unintentionally penalizes people for their choice of major.

“I’ve been talking about it with professors and most of them feel the same way,” Emerson said.

Adrianne Anderson, a senior political science major, said that if the new policy was not in place and the additional charges for printing were added to tuition, people would complain about the higher tuition. She said the cost for printing is money saved on other things.

“If people have a lot to print out, then they probably didn’t spend much on books,” Anderson said.

Senter also said more printers could be added to labs where lines form because of the new system in classes.

Whillock said he hoped the deans’ council would discuss other options to limit careless printing on campus, but still keep a printing limit from being an educational obstacle.

“We’re working to find the best option for students,” Whillock said. “I know what caused this issue, but I don’t know how to resolve it.”

He said a lot of the problems with the new policy had not been considered when it was approved.

Chrissy Braden
l.c.braden@student.tcu.edu