ASUSU may have temporary solution
Doug Smeath, Assistant News Editor
It’s for emergency use only, but those involved in working out Utah State University’s computer lab printout debates say they have a temporary fix.
“A compromise trial solution has been conceived and implemented,” said Associated Students of USU Academics Vice President Jim Stephenson to members of the ASUSU Executive Council at their weekly meeting Tuesday.
At issue is the decision by last year’s council to end the policy of pre-paid computer printouts in labs. Starting last semester, students who wanted to print from labs needed to have previously deposited money into their Aggie Express accounts to use their student ID cards to pay for printouts.
Before that, a number of “free” printouts – originally 100 but then reduced to 35 – were included in student fees and were available to all students with their ID cards.
But last year, the council voted to eliminate that, based on original plans that prepaid printouts would be only a temporary policy.
This year’s council, along with the Stater’s Council, has been trying to find a way to help students who find themselves unable to pay for printouts in labs. These are students who need to make printouts – especially last-minute printouts right before classes -but who haven’t put money into their accounts or didn’t realize their accounts were out of money.
The new compromise, Stephenson said, is to allow students who need printouts but have no money in their accounts to use a sort of honor system.
Students in that type of an “emergency” situation would give lab workers their ID cards to be swiped. The cost would be charged to Student Services on the condition the student would go pay for the printouts as soon as possible.
Stephenson said he hopes the compromise, developed by Stater’s Council and Vice President for Student Services Pat Terrell, will help, but it’s not what he was hoping for.
“I’m still disappointed that we can’t – the first proposal was cash in the computer labs,” he said, referring to a proposal many ASUSU officers support that would allow students to pay for printouts by giving cash directly to lab workers. “I’m grateful that we at least tried to do something.”
He said the idea of cash payments in labs was opposed for a few reasons.
“They just don’t want to deal with cash,” Stephenson said.
He said there were concerns that cash in the computer labs would put lab workers at risk of theft and would also lead to a need for accounting.
“There are some security issues,” he said.
The compromise, which Stephenson stressed is just “an emergency thing,” will be evaluated after a month.
If, at that time, it is discovered that some students are relying on it too much and claiming they are in a last-minute printout emergency multiple times, the policy will be reworked.
He said he also expects lab workers to remind students using the emergency compromise that they can instead put money in their Aggie Express accounts online with a credit card.
He said new encryption software now allows online deposits to be immediately used.
Stephenson said he hopes to continue working on a better solution to the current printout problem.