Gannon Knight Features

     Click. Save. Click. Print.
     The process of printing an essay, research paper or Power Point notes isn’t a difficult one to comprehend, and students often rush through the printing steps without even blinking an eye.
     But what if students exceed the printing page limit set at Gannon University? Are they doomed paperless for the remainder of the year?
     If students needed to print beyond the 500-page printing limit, they would be advised to talk with their academic adviser or one of their current professors, who in turn would submit a request to Information Technology Services. At that point, 500 more pages would be added to students’ accounts.
     The 500-page printing limit at Gannon serves two purposes: to conserve costs and to encourage students to be more conscientious of the paper they are using.
     Mary Carol Gensheimer, assistant professor in the communication arts department, said the students in her senior thesis course – which requires a lot of page printing – rarely exceed the printing page limit.
     “In academia there is a need to print things,” she said. “However, we need to be cautious when we hit print.”
     Gensheimer said she encourages her students to become more digitally-oriented by requiring them to have a digital copy of everything they include in their thesis notebook. Gensheimer said it’s much more efficient to have a digital copy of things, and that the world is progressing in that direction.
     “Even the older generation is starting to prefer digital copies,” she said. “It’s just so much more convenient.”
     Five-hundred pages may not seem like an obscene amount of paper for each of the 4,238 undergraduate students at Gannon, but with that amount of students, it’s possible to print 2,119,000 pages per semester.
     And that is only a fraction of what Gannon prints per year. According to Chris Matheis, director of the Gannon University Press, Gannon spends more than $166,000 on paper every year.
     This amount finances many paper products, including plain white paper, brochures and pamphlets. Matheis also said the university orders and uses 8.2 million sheets of plain white paper per year.
     According to Conservatree.org, a single tree can produce 8,335 pieces of paper.
     Using that standard, Gannon goes through approximately 983 trees a year.
     It seems that going completely paperless would be close to impossible. Matheis said sometimes paper is necessary to achieve things like organization and presentational display.
     It’s also essential for informative purposes, such as the syllabi that Gannon professors are required to distribute at the beginning of each class.
     Sophomore pre-pharmacy major Shalyn Quigley said she thinks that having a hard copy of the syllabus is very helpful and a much better alternative to those that are posted online.
     “It is easier to keep track of things when you have it on paper,” Quigley said.
     She added, however, that she thinks that the 500-page printing limit for students is more than enough.
     “I have never printed over the limit,” she said. “In fact, I’m not quite sure how it would even be possible.”