Big Brother on the hill – Green Terror

It is important to note that more and more professors assign web based course readings in PDF format, thereby forcing many students of history, political science and the liberal arts in general to print on their “accounts” what used to be a departmental burden. It would be interesting to know if departments/profs are consciously taking note of this new way of shifting costs to the college level. In any event, this was sent to a friend of mine…she was number seventeen of the twenty-five in case you were wondering.

>Date: 28 May 2003 02:40:59 EDT

>From: Callen H. Thompson

>Reply-To: NewMouthFromTheDirtySouth

>Subject: GreenPrint

>To: (Recipient list suppressed)

Hi,

I’m writing to inform you that you are the top 25 students who used the most sheets of paper through GreenPrint last week (between the dates of May 18th and 25th).

This blitz is not meant to be a scolding, just an opportunity for a reminder.

GreenPrint is currently free to students but will not be able to continue to be if we maintain the current rate of usage. Public printing has tripled in popularity since the advent of GreenPrint and the college is footing the bill. Currently Dartmouth uses over 6 million pages of paper each year through GreenPrint and will have used 7.5 million by the end of the year if the usage rate remains constant. That figure does not include personal printers. This is tremendously wasteful environmentally and expensive for the college.

GreenPrint is to be used for academic purposes only and should not be used to print out event fliers, personal photographs, etc.

Remember:

1) to use duplex (double-sided) at all possible times. Students are sometimes hesitant to print papers duplex because they assume their professors would dislike grading two-sided documents. Often professors do not mind, so ask your individual professors to be certain—this can even be done with a thesis, ask Lauren Foley.

2) remember to correctly format documents so that they do not end up being hundreds of pages of gibberish (this has happened in the past)

and

3) think about whether or not you really need a hard copy of something before you print it out. Students oftentimes print out pages and pages of notes off of the internet without reading them through first to see if they would actually need them in a hard copy form.

I will blitz you all individually with how many pages you used total last week and what rank you were.

You do not need to respond to this blitz, this is more just an e-mail to let you know how much you used. I hope it will allow you to reduce some of your paper use.

GreenPrint is free public-printing so you have every right to use it, however, we need to curb some of this overuse and misuse (non-academic related printing).

Please help us out both for the environment and for the fiscal health of the college.

Thank you thank you and have a good night,

Please blitz me if you have any questions.

-Callie Thompson

ECO-Intern for GreenPrint.