UNC Greek houses to join Cooper’s CCI printing initiative

Starting this fall, students will begin seeing more printing stations both on and off campus.

By fall break, Carolina Computing Initiative printers will be installed in Alumni Hall and Phillips Hall, said Student Body President Mary Cooper, who spearheaded the initiative.

Printers will also be installed in some Greek houses. Fraternities and sororities will fund the printers out of their own budgets, Cooper said.

The expansion coincides with a doubling of the printing fee for all students from five to 10 cents per page. The increase was due to budget cuts, not Cooper’s project.

The installations in fraternity and sorority houses will come in two waves. A handful of houses will get printers before fall break, said Andrew Williams, student government’s Greek affairs liaison. If the expansion is successful, more houses might choose to have a printer installed, he said.

“We want to make sure it’s going to work before we go too far with it, because these are essentially uncharted waters,” Cooper said.

The printers will be leased from the University. If the house has an existing UNC network connection, the setup will not add any extra fees, Williams said.

Houses without an existing network connection will pay a one-time $400 fee and an annual $50 upkeep fee for each house.

Greek houses that already have a network connection include Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Delta, Phi Gamma Delta, Sigma Sigma Sigma and Phi Mu.

Panhellenic Council President Lindsey Stephens said the fee won’t be an obstacle for most houses.

“With the amount of people living in each house, the fee wouldn’t be a problem considering how helpful it would be,” Stephens said.

Cooper had planned to arrange the installation of a printer in Graham Memorial, but the effort was delayed. In its place, she chose Alumni Hall.

Officials from Information Technology Services are in the early stages of developing an addition to the UNC smartphone application that would allow students to print from their phones, Cooper said.

Along with working with printer expansion, Cooper said she is working to fix existing problems with CCI printer systems.

“Things that don’t make sense, like printing in the (Undergraduate Library) and the discrepancy between the first floor and the basement, those things are going to get fixed,” she said.

Cooper, who detailed the printer expansion plan in her campaign platform, said the project has been difficult but worth the effort.

“At the end of the day it will make students’ lives easier, which is what’s important.”

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