College to charge students for printing

A new GoPrint system that charges for student printing will be installed on campus in late April or early May.

Students will be charged for the amount of paper they use for printing at eight labs. The labs no longer will allow students to print for free.

"The administration invested in eight GoPrint systems to be placed in the writing lab, the Loftin Cyber Cafe, the math lab, the allied health labs, the business labs and the Internet skills center lab, and two in the English lab," Usha Venkat, director of information and communication technologies, said March 3.

There already is an older model of the GoPrint system in the student learning assistance center on the seventh floor of Moody. A new GoPrint system will replace the one there now.

"The GoPrint system has been in the SLAC lab since 2005; it will get an upgraded version," Brenda Briseño, director of sales at GoPrint Systems Inc., said Monday.

"The cost for printing will most likely be 10 cents for black and white and 15 cents for color," Venkat said. "It's pretty much the standard pricing scheme that the other colleges are doing."

The cost for printing will be the same at each lab.

"Money from the machines will go to pay for the maintenance and the toner," Venkat said.

Students who want to print on campus will need to purchase a print card at one of three locations: Loftin Student Center, Moody Learning Center and the nursing and allied health complex.

Students will take a print card to a kiosk machine in the designated labs. An administrative fee of 50 cents is charged for each new card; students may add funds to the print cards as needed.

Students will be able to use print cards not only at this college but also at all of the Alamo Colleges, Venkat said.

Briseño said the GoPrint system "is pretty much a flawless system. It doesn't need to be monitored."

"College administrators have the authority to restrict access to wireless printing," Briseño said.

Venkat said the change was made to save money.

"The reason for doing it now is because … this is a time of budget cuts … this is a time where districtwide recommendations are to be more cost-effective," Venkat said. "This is a way to control the amount of printing that is taking place."

Briseño said the company expects to begin installing the new machines in early April.

"In the SLAC lab, they charged me 50 cents for a card out of $1, and I was only left with 50 cents to print with," international studies sophomore Sarah Pichardo said Wednesday.

"I'm mad because it's like every semester, they want to see how much more money they can take from us," Pichardo said.