On June 25, 2001 UC Davis implemented a new printing policy for the general use computer rooms. Peter Blando and Tim Leamy encouraged this policy with their report on printing in November of 1999, available here. In the past, Information Technology had not charged for printing in the rooms in which they managed. A trend had begun to develop in the computer rooms when the number of pages printed began to rise at 200,000 pages per quarter. This dramatic rise was attributed to an increase in computer literate students printing and a quadrupling in the average number of pages printed per person. Additional explanations for the rise in computer lab printing can be that more professors are now using the World Wide Web to disperse class materials, as well as a lack of incentives to print responsibly.

This report was presented before a sub-committee of the Academic Computing Coordinating Council. Their discussion, available here, concluded that there should be a per page charge ($.05) for printing after a number of free pages (200 pages). This policy would encourage more responsible printing by students and encourage faculty to use less wasteful means of distributing course material. By simply communicating through emails to the computer lab users, the number of pages printed dropped 18% (~600,000 pages) over the summer. This was without actually charging people, merely stating that they were going to start charging.

Peter Blando and the Computer Lab Management staff did a full report at the end of the Fall Quarter 2001 to determine the effects of the policy when the campus is functioning with full time students. When the university regained its full population in the fall, the number of pages dropped another 42 percent. Click Here to view a graph showing the difference in recycling before and after the policy change.

Click here to view more information on the current printing policy.