Pitch:
- This feature would focus on the newest EcoPrint initiative on campus. UNE’s fall 2019 semester was the first in which student were credited a 500-page limit for printing per semester. I personally heard many student complaints of this change in the beginning, but I wonder how those opinions have changed since the first semester has ended. Did students actually use less paper? Did they find the page limit too restrictive? Did faculty change their printing requirements in order to assist students in this initiative?
- This feature would focus on the most recent research going on around campus. I personally work in a research lab and believe I have high access to this group of students and faculty on campus. This feature would increase student awareness of what research projects are currently being conducted and possibly encourage more student involvement.
Early Draft:
*Headline
*Sub headline
*Byline
BIDDEFORD, ME—The University of New England’s newest EcoPrint initiative that originally sparked apprehension from students and faculty receives approval after the conclusion of the first semester which saved the university … in printing costs.
Students were allotted a five-hundred-page per semester print limit at the commencement of the 2019 fall semester. This initiative was intended to reduce the large amounts of paper being used under the former system of unlimited printing. In fact, this new method was able to reduce paper use by …, says …. Although many expressed their concerns of this restriction when first proposed, the current judgement of the EcoPrint initiative seems to have reversed with many in favor of its installment.
“I never reach the page limit. I used to print out full power-point presentations for class . . . it made me really think twice before I printed things out,” says third-year environmental studies minor, Amanda Bettencourt.
Many students feared running out of pages mid-semester, requiring them to purchase extra prints for five-cents per single sided sheet and seven-centers per double sided sheet. This was not a problem for most students and, many were unable to reach anywhere near the max page limit, Bettencourt explains.
*More body
The University will continue to restrict paper use under this initiative making sure to replenish the student page limit every semester.
Workshop Draft:
*Headline
*Sub headline
BY: RAVIN DAVIS
BIDDEFORD, ME— The University of New England saved 400,000 sheets of paper during the 2019 fall semester through its newest EcoPrint initiative according to Eric Kuntz, Director of University Technology.
At the commencement of the 2019 fall semester, students were allotted a printing limit of 500 pages. This initiative was intended to reduce the large amounts of paper being used under the former system of unlimited student printing. As a matter of fact, Kuntz confirms that this new method was able to reduce paper use by 40-45% of the university’s original paper expenditure. Now, the initiative that originally sparked apprehension from students receives great approval after the conclusion of the first semester.
Three years ago, Information Technology Services was put to the task of designing a sustainable program that would decrease the amount of university printing. Kuntz said, they turned to representatives from the student government, the libraries, and student services in order to implement their plan effectively and fairly. EcoPrint’s foremost goal was to guarantee that students were able to print all necessary coursework materials while optimally limiting print waste.
“Over the past several years our annual student printing numbers have stayed consistently around 2,000,000 sheets of paper. . . . this equals around 190,000 gallons of waste water and 111,340 kWh of power to just make this paper,” said Kuntz.
While most students over the past three years printed 100-300 sheets per semester, a small minority printed up to 3,000 sheets per semester. After crunching these figures, Kuntz said the average prints per student per semester worked out to be 450 sheets. This data ultimately helped determine the 500-page per semester, or $37.50 total print allowance, that was set as of this year.
“. . . of the 4,500 accounts that have access to printing services only 37 students used the entirety of their print allowance before the fall term ended. Additionally, only 44 additional students had less than $5.00, or 133 pages, available of their gifted balance at the end of the semester,” said Kuntz.
Many students feared they would drain their allowance mid-semester, which would have required them to purchase extra pages for five-cents per single sided sheet or seven-cents per double sided sheet. This however was not a problem for most students and, many were unable to surpass the page limit, third-year environmental studies minor, Amanda Bettencourt confirms.
“I never reached the page limit. I used to print out full power-point presentations for class . . . it made me really think twice before I printed things out,” said Bettencourt.
Some students however still found the overall limit confining. Second-year neuroscience major, Francesca Asmus found herself feeling limited by the printing constriction even though she never ran out of prints. She explains that she felt held back at times compared to when she would have been free to print without any restriction.
However, EcoPrint’s ability to cut print waste has benefitted students in other ways that would have been otherwise unattainable. Kuntz said that renegotiations have been made to provide students with cloud-based printing, better onsite support, spare printers in times of technical malfunction, and updated printers.
“The reduction in wasteful and excessive printing has allowed us to replace all of our older printers with new high-capacity Xerox units and expand our printing areas to include an additional 4 kiosks in Biddeford and 1 kiosk in Portland, providing more convenience to the UNE community,” said Kuntz.
The University will continue under this EcoPrint initiative for the remainder of the academic year and delay any further modification to the print limit until more data has been collected.
Revised Draft:
UNIVERSITY REDUCES ITS ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT BY GOING PAPERLESS
UNE’s EcoPrint initiative succeeds by nearly cutting paper-use in half while strengthening student and faculty commitment to a healthier planet.
BY: RAVIN DAVIS
The University of New England saved 400,000 sheets of paper during the 2019 fall semester through its newest EcoPrint initiative according to Eric Kuntz, Director of University Technology.
At the commencement of the 2019 fall semester, students were allotted an individual printing limit of 500 pages. This initiative was intended to reduce the large amounts of paper being used under the former system of unlimited student printing.
As a matter of fact, Kuntz confirms that this new policy was able to reduce paper use by 40-45% of the university’s original consumption. Now, the initiative that originally sparked apprehension from students receives approval after the conclusion of the first semester.
Three years ago, Information Technology Services was put to the task of designing a sustainable program that would decrease the amount of university printing. Kuntz said, they turned to representatives from the student government, libraries, and student services in order to implement an effective, yet fair plan. EcoPrint’s foremost goal was to guarantee that students were able to print all necessary coursework materials while optimally limiting print waste.
“Over the past several years our annual student printing numbers have stayed consistently around 2,000,000 sheets of paper,” said Kuntz. “This equals around 190,000 gallons of waste-water and 111,340 kWh of power to just make this paper.”
While most students over the past three years printed 100-300 sheets per semester, a small minority printed upward to 3,000 sheets per semester. After crunching these figures, Kuntz said the average number of prints per student worked out to equal 450 sheets per semester. This data ultimately helped determine the 500-page, or $37.50 print allowance, per semester that was set as of this year.
“Of the 4,500 accounts that have access to printing services only 37 students used the entirety of their print allowance before the fall term ended. Additionally, only 44 additional students had less than $5.00, or 133 pages, available of their gifted balance at the end of the semester,” said Kuntz.
Third-year environmental studies minor, Amanda Bettencourt, explains that many students feared they would drain their allowance mid-semester, which would have required them to purchase extra pages for five-cents per single-sided sheet or seven-cents per double-sided sheet. This however was not a problem for most students, and many were unable to surpass the page limit.
“I never reached the page limit. I used to print out full power-point presentations for class,” said Bettencourt. “It made me really think twice before I printed things out. I like how this change has helped me make better choices for the environment.”
Some students however still felt confined within the print allowance. Second-year neuroscience major, Francesca Asmus, found herself feeling limited by the printing restriction even though she never ran out of prints. Especially considering the print-load that is necessary for science classes such as organic chemistry, she explains that she felt held back at times.
“I didn’t like the fact that my printing was being controlled,” said Asmus. “Even if I needed to print something for a class, I hesitated and felt like I needed to really conserve my prints.”
However, EcoPrint’s ability to cut print waste has also benefitted students in ways that were otherwise not possible without the immense reduction. Kuntz said that renegotiations due to last semester’s results have been made to provide students with cloud-based printing, better onsite support, spare printers in times of technical malfunction, and updated printers.
“The reduction in wasteful and excessive printing has allowed us to replace all of our older printers with new high-capacity Xerox units and expand our printing areas to include an additional 4 kiosks in Biddeford and 1 kiosk in Portland, providing more convenience to the UNE community,” said Kuntz.
While faculty printing has not been limited under this initiative, many are also in favor of its intention, and overall support the elimination of paper waste alongside students. Biology professor, Dr. David Sandmire, attributes majority of his decreased paper-use over the years to the emergence of Blackboard.
“I don’t really create a lot of paper waste these days having Blackboard as a nice vehicle,” said Sandmire. “When you can, go digital.”
Sandmire does not foresee a future that is completely paperless, especially when it comes to administering course exams, but he encourages his students to justify their paper use and only print when necessary and beneficial to learning.
The university will proceed under the current EcoPrint initiative for the remainder of the academic year and delay any further modification to the print limit until more data has been collected.
Workshop Experience (Journal #9):
Structurally, it was suggested that I remove ellipsis from quotes, and introduce my sources sooner within paragraphs. It was also suggested that I focus down my feature to either center around the intention of EcoPrint or the student opinions of EcoPrint. My angle may have been presented in a way that blurred the line between these two elements. Overall, editing and restructure to make sure these elements flow together into a single angle may be beneficial. Most feedback however, focused on the variety of sources in my draft. I included quotes/paraphrased information from Eric Kuntz (who led the development of EcoPrint), Amanda Bettencourt (who was in favor of EcoPrint), and Francesca Asmus (who was against EcoPrint). First, it was suggested that I interview and quote a faculty member or alternate member of the college who would have a novel opinion of this initiative. This would capture a better image of how the whole campus is feeling regarding this topic. Secondly, it was widely suggested that I include a dissenting opinion of the EcoPrint initiative. Even though I already have a dissenting opinion already embedded within the ninth paragraph, I feel this section was overlooked due to my failure of highlighting it within the entire article. During my interview with Francesca, she was against EcoPrint for the way it made me feel confined and unable to print material for her science classes. I believe that I have poorly explained this detail, leading all readers to misunderstand the dissenting view.
First, I definitely plan to edit my feature for minor grammar alterations and sentence flow for clarity of the angle. Secondly, I plan to reach out to a faculty member in order to understand their point of view on EcoPrint. I also plan to re-interview Francesca in order to better highlight the dissenting opinion. Lastly, I may also interview another student in favor of EcoPrint. Since my angle is leaning toward the success of EcoPrint, and I don’t want to inaccurately confuse my readers into thinking there is large backlash surrounding this initiative.
Editorial Team Reflection:
Some of the most common issues discussed during the feedback workshops involved paragraph organization and format. Breaking up paragraphs into small, digestible chunks was possibly the most commonly addressed issue. While an academic paper is organized into a few large paragraphs, news feature stories have many, small paragraphs. This was something that a lot of us first-time journalists did not expect to be a challenge. Getting into the style of a feature article proved to be harder than it looked. Furthermore, organization and flow were also large challenges for many. Some of the best pieces of advice regarding this issue I believe involved the inverted pyramid idea, mood, and storytelling techniques. Organizing an article into chronological order was not always the best way to help the readers understand the main idea. It was important to keep the inverted pyramid in mind because a reader is quick to become disinterested if the most important facts of an article are corralled down toward the bottom. Articles that struggled with this aspect were both unclear on angle and most of the time uninteresting in the beginning. It was also challenging for many to maintain a professional yet non-academic tone. The tone of a feature was something that was new to most people. The informative mood of academic papers is too serious, but a conversational tone is too informal. It was difficult to balance the line between an article being too formal and not formal enough, but I think this issue was best resolved by referencing other feature pieces and discussion. Some papers also struggled with upholding a positive tone that did not attack or feel negative toward the audience. Lastly, possibly the biggest challenge that was faced by all, was sourcing out a variety of opinions and remaining as unbiased as possible. A paper felt incredibly empty when more than one opinion was not recognized. Overall, it was helpful to discuss these issues during the workshops, because an audience with a fresh outlook on the topic was best able to provide feedback on what else the reader would be looking for in an article. It was easy to unknowingly omit a point of view, especially when the writer is distracted by their own biases. I think the most helpful way of solving these issues was to map out all the possible people affected by the particular topic and go from there.
Feature Story Reflection:
While drafting and developing my feature, my first challenge came when contacting individuals to interview. I personally sent eight emails to eight different people before I was finally able to reach someone willing to talk about EcoPrint. I did not realize it could be so difficult to collect the information I needed or how important it was to have a constant backup plan. As I began to write my first draft, it was one of the first times I had to really concentrate on writing in a different style. I am most used to writing formal, scientific papers; but this article required a much different, informal, non-academic style. I referenced other feature article examples to get a better feel for the mood I had to create. After workshopping, I noticed that there were a lot of comments coming from others that I had also wanted to mention myself. It made me realize that genuine peer reviews can really be helpful and comprehensively identify the common issues that an audience would encounter. Furthermore, there are certain issues with a draft in which the writer might not see at all even though an entire group of readers do. It is important to listen to that feedback from a fresh set of eyes and take it into large consideration in order to create the best piece possible. I also realized how important it is to think at all possible angles; it is obvious to an audience when a piece is one-sided and biased. Furthermore, I noticed that there were many common mistakes and necessary changes between writers. Some of the reoccurring issues among features included: long paragraphs, lack of different perspectives, and lack of a professional yet storytelling mood. I am excited to see how the first drafts of our next articles will improve considering these common, widespread mistakes that we all made. When revising, my biggest change to the article was to add in more quotes and another interview sources. It was refreshing to get an additional perspective, and I was interested by how much it truly expanded my feature. Lastly, I did not realize how the time-crunch would factor into writing an article. I can image it may be very stressful in an authentic news situation.
