When students returned to campus this fall, many ran into roadblocks when they tried to print their class readings. Over the summer, Information Technology Services (ITS) implemented several updates to the college’s free printing system, including reducing the number of printers on campus and switching over to a new printing software.
Eight dorm printers were removed due to “lack of use,” according to Seth Frisbie-Fulton, associate director of support services in ITS. Frisbie-Fulton said that printing in campus libraries accounts for 80% of student printing, and the more centralized printers in Shane Lounge and Sharples Community Commons are each utilized twice as often as the most heavily used dorm printers.
The college introduced two new softwares to print: Mobility Print, the app that lists the available printers and installs them on student devices, and GarnetPrint, the shared queue for student printers that currently support print release, including printers at the libraries, Shane Lounge, Sharples Commons, the Gender and Sexuality Center, and the Intercultural Center.
The remaining dorm printers (in Danawell, David Kemp, Mary Lyons, NPPR, Wharton, Willets, and Woolman) will be updated later in the semester to include OneCard print release and be added to GarnetPrint so that future students will only have to install one service for the whole campus. This will mitigate the need for students to install a printer for each location on their devices, Frisbie-Fulton explained.
Students Run Into Roadblocks
The switch to GarnetPrint was intended to “simplify the printing process,” Frisbie-Fulton said. However, students are having difficulty using the new system, with some technical issues impacting the way that they prepare for class.
Ivy Hoffman ’27 lamented, “The printing experience has been pretty bad so far. There was an understandable adjustment to the new system, but it doesn’t seem like things have gotten much better since the start of the semester.”
Hoffman noted that she has “not yet had a printing experience that has gone well.” Frisbie-Fulton mentioned, though, that ITS has mostly fielded issues related to the initial installation of the new system on personal devices, after which they “tend not to get follow up questions.”
Hoffman also pointed out that many students are required to print an increasing amount of their papers for class as professors react to the rise of AI, with some requiring printed copies of all readings and written assignments for in-class discussion. Another student said that they were unable to prepare for a class discussion since students are no longer able to print multiple copies of a document at once. They explained that they needed to print additional copies as handouts for their classmates, but were unable to do so, ultimately needing the professor to print copies for the class on the department printer.
The college has always banned the printing of multiple copies of a document on the Media Center’s color printer. Until this semester, however, students have been able to print an unrestricted number of copies in the public printers across campus (though ITS has always discouraged their use for flyers or large batches).
Frisbie-Fulton explained that “the multiple copy restriction is meant to keep printers and paper from being monopolized by a single user, or a few accidental characters resulting in far more pages than expected.”
“It does help with those two cases, but it isn’t perfect,” he added.
ITS recently updated the printing system to accommodate requests for two copies per print, and acknowledged they are open to feedback, but that “some policies are necessary to keep resources equitable and available to all.”
As ITS has not received many questions from students once the printers have been installed on their computers, follow-ups seem to have increasingly fallen on the library staff. In an email correspondence with The Phoenix, Anne Houston, director of libraries and college librarian, said that students have been asking more questions about printing, adding that the libraries “have directions at the printers and have ensured that our staff and student workers know how to help.”
Evelyn Cooper ’28, a library assistant working in Underhill, corroborated that her daily workload has increased, especially as she must navigate the printing system alongside frustrated students: “I was not provided with any training on this new system, instead working with the Underhill librarian [Liz Waltman] to figure it out together.”
McCabe Library Assistant Alma Greenfield ’29 added that the system took her almost three weeks to set up on her own computer , and she’s seeing students struggle each shift with “unanticipated issues,” including that iOS devices defaulted to printing in an A3/A4 size which is incompatible with the library printers. However, she qualifies, “that’s the most easily fixable issue; I am often asked questions regarding the downloading of GarnetPrint itself, which are much more elusive.”
McCabe student workers have been given multiple different guides for troubleshooting issues, but Greenfield remarked that these were not catch-alls.
She ended on a more hopeful note: “But, as usual, I think it’s just something that takes some time to get used to. It’s definitely been a learning curve, but I have seen results so far, even just in terms of the amount of questions I get per shift.”
