Turning a New Leaf by Saving Them

By Katie Serignese

Some Stony Brook students are trying to turn a new leaf in campus SINC sites by saving leaves of paper. Stony Brook’s environmental club has been trying to get a double-sided printing default implemented in all SINC sites. Between 715 and 740 students signed a Facebook petition last semester to have double-sided paper as the printing standard, according to Justin Grimm-Greenblatt, president of the club.

“It’s all in gaining support from the student body and getting the awareness out,” he said.

According to Tino Evangelou, a chairman of the club’s grass roots committee, the Graduate Student Organization was very enthusiastic to support the issue. The Graduate Student Employees Union also voted unanimously to help.

Grimm-Greenblatt also added that the two groups are going to write letters in support. They will be sent to Pharos, the system currently used in the SINC sites, and others will be handed out.

Between the dates of Sept. 6 and Dec. 22 a total of 5,626,371 sheets of paper were printed in the SINC sites, according to someone in instructional computing who asked to remain anonymous. This total also includes cover sheets, which are used to separate each printing job.

“The real thing we should be doing is trying to limit what we print,” said Richard Reeder, chief officer of information and director of DoIT, “the allocation on printing caused it to go down a little. It was skyrocketing before hand.”

The current printing quota is 40 pages a day that will rollover all week until the weekend, and then start again. Nancy Duffrin, who implemented Pharos on campus, said the instructional computing department really wanted to set the quota at 500 pages a semester, but found 40 pages to be manageable and avoid double-sided printing.

If double-sided printing was implemented the default could also be overridden. The SINC site in the library used to have express printers with the double-sided default. “It was a mess and people didn’t like it,” Duffrin said. “They were always changing back to single-sided printing and it was loaded with technical problems.”

Printers are another issue that deters double-sided printing. Reeder’s department has been replacing Hewlett Packard printers with more expensive Xerox printers that break less. “Hewlett had to take the duplex option off because it broke so much. It’s four times the mechanics for double-sided printing,” he said. “Paper jams are another problem in the duplex-print process.”

Other issues are teachers not wanting double-sided papers handed in and putting the burden on SINC sites to print their class materials.

Some faculty members are already in favor. Reeder has instituted paper allocations in his own department.

“I think it would be a good idea to get people to think about double-sided printing,” Duffrin said.