By Jesse McLean
Features Editor
Imagine: you’ve just finished the closing lines of your 3,000-word sociology essay, Hillary Clinton: Masculinity in Society. It’s analytical. It’s not plagiarized. And it’s due in five minutes or late penalties will set in. You slide your cursor over the print icon on the library computer, ready to cough out the 10-cents-a-page fee.
But it’s not that simple. Even though you have enough coins to print the essay and buy yourself a coffee afterwards, the self-serve or campus printing service machines will only accept money from your Ryerson One card — which you now have to go get money loaded onto before you can print.
As an employee from Ryerson’s computing and communications centre says, “without money on their One card, no student can print from the computers.”
But again, it’s not that simple. In fact, some students can print for (kind of) free. Journalism students pay about $100 a semester in ancillary fees, which include access to three computer labs in the Rogers Communication Centre, all equipped with laser-jet printers.
Yet journalism students aren’t the only ones abusing the privilege; any member of the faculty of Communication and Design (FCAD) can log on and slaughter a forest.
So, how can you non-FCAD-ers bask in the glory of free printing and avoid the One card hassles? Simply befriend someone in the faculty.
Or try The Ryersonian’s office on the ground floor of the RCC: they welcome students in need of printing, especially on Tuesday afternoons.
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