Free printing and cheaper textbooks: What more could a college student want?

The Associated Students of Colorado State University Senate discussed just that, along with a resolution to create more informative course registration at their meeting Wednesday night.

Senators discuss offering free printing 

Sen. Josh Lindell, representing the University Issues Committee, spoke to the Senate about Freenters, a company that would make printing free for all students on campus.

The company, founded by University of Chicago students, is able to provide free printing for college students by including ads in what it prints. The content of papers that are printed won’t have ads embedded in them. Instead, the first and last pages and every fourth page in between contain full-page advertisements.

The advertisements would be from local Fort Collins businesses and include deals and coupons students can use around town.

Lindell said the purpose of the resolution was to express that the student body wants more free printing. The College of Liberal Arts, for example, provides free printing in Clark C for all its students.

“A lot of colleges … already have a sufficient amount of free printing, but a lot of colleges do not, so we really wanted to expand this ability,” Lindell said. 

Freenters would pay for all the ink and paper, and to offset the added paper printed for the ads, they have partnered with PrintReleaf, a third party platform. PrintReleaf “monitors the amount of pages printed via Freenters at the institution and certifiably reforest the associated paper consumption through reforestation projects around the world,” according to Freenters’ website.

Cheaper textbooks resolution presented

A resolution to support the University’s efforts to pursue the Colorado Open Education Resources Grant was introduced by College of Liberal Arts Sen. Jack Wold-McGimsey.

The state grant would “provide up to $500,000 in funding to institutions, faculty and staff and to support and expand creation, adoption, adaptation and promotion of the use of OER in the state of Colorado,” according to the Colorado state government’s higher education website. These resources primarily include textbooks and other supplemental learning materials.

The grant aims to save students at Colorado’s public institutions of higher education $2 million in textbook costs in the academic year 2019-2020, according to the grant proposal. 

“We’re trying to encourage the University to utilize affordable and digital open education resources,” Wold-McGimsey said. “We’re trying to get a more thorough and uniform express of support for this effort.”

More informational course registration brought to Senate floor

A resolution supporting more clear and informational online course registration was presented by Budgetary Affairs Committee Chair Alissa Threatt, urging the improvement of timeliness, transparency and accuracy of course registration.

“There are just basic things in registration that are not being met, such as the instructor and, in some cases, even the time that the class is offered is not even available,” Threatt said.

Another example was classes that don’t have the classroom number or location listed during registration.

“I have to go all the way from the Oval to the Stadium in ten minutes,” Threatt said. “I wish that I had known where those classes were when I was registering because maybe I would’ve changed some stuff.”

Stuart Smith can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @stuartsmithnews.