The Empire State Building stands at 1,250 feet tall, the equivalent of 3.7 million stacked sheets of paper. During the 2014 fiscal year alone, the College of Health and Human Sciences used this much paper, totaling $120,000 in printing costs.

This semester, CHHS is planning to change their printing regulations for the spring 2015 semester to try and cut back on costs and paper usage, according to Dave Carpenter, the assistant to dean of the college.

“It’s a growing problem and it is something that is not going to go away,” Carpenter said. “We were spending more money than what we were bringing in and that left us with two options: either put a cap on printing or raise technology costs.”

In an email sent out to the approximately 5,000 students in the college Nov. 12, the changes were explained and the opportunity to contact Carpenter was welcomed and, in fact, encouraged.

The change encompasses all departments of CHHS including Design Merchandising, Construction Management, Health and Exercise Science, Occupational Therapy, Education, Social Work, Food Science and Nutrition and Human Development and Family Studies.

“I am on the edge about it,” said McKenna Howard, a human development and family studies sophomore in the college. “It is only $5, but we have never had to pay for it before.”

Carpenter said the policy will allocate $5 of CHHS students’ technology fees, which are $71 per semester, to printing and that would serve as a printing cap for students.

“It would move us from a soft to a hard cap on printing,” Carpenter said. “After that amount of pages, students would have to pay for it themselves.”

Sand Broscheit, a human development and family studies sophomore, said the only time she uses the printing labs on campus is when she has to print hard copies of assignments and was “just shocked” to hear about the changes.

“I think the whole point of the colleges having labs is for us to have these resources,” Broscheit said.

Under the new cap, students would be able to print approximately 250 sheets of paper in black and white per semester, and if this amount is not used, the excess would roll into the next semester, Carpenter said.

“What I would like to encourage students to think of is we are trying to keep the burden of costs low,” Carpenter said.

Meetings about the changes will be held Tuesday, Dec. 2 at 5 p.m. and Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 2 p.m. in Gibbons 101.

Collegian Staff Reporter Megan Fischer can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @MegFischer04.