College can often be a fast-paced and distracting experience, leaving some Lobos to miss or disregard changes to resources that may affect their education.
For instance, some may not have noticed the 50 percent decrease in printing funds available to students on their Lobo IDs.
The change, which went into effect in January, cut the amount of printing money allotted to students from $10 to $5.
The reduction, however, is only for University Library printing services, not PawPrints, which can be utilized in the printing labs and other areas on campus.
University Libraries printing services are not funded by student tuition, but PawPrints funds still come out of the pockets of students via student fees, said David Sanchez, associate director of Core IT Services.
“Tuition and fees often seem to go hand-in-hand, but there is a distinction,” Sanchez said. “Student fees are proposed to the Student Fee Review Board, which makes recommendations to the Budget Leadership Team on what student fees are to be used for.”
That includes funding PawPrints.
According to Associate Dean of Public Services, Mark Emmons, the cut was made primarily for budgetary reasons.
“We lost $400,000 last year to budget cuts around the campus,” Emmons said. “We had to make some hard decisions.”
In recent weeks, UNM President Bob Frank announced a hiring freeze for the next six months, another direct response to looming state budget cuts.
“Our goal is to minimize harm to students,” Emmons said. “It always is. Students come first for us.”
Before the cuts were determined, faculty at University Libraries first looked at what services were not being fully taken advantage of.
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“Students were not using all of the $10 on average,” Emmons said. “Some students of course used all of it, and wanted more, but most of the students didn’t even use it all. Those who did usually use less than $5. So we felt relatively safe cutting it back to $5 at that point.”
According to Emmons, part of the process moving forward is a growing partnership with the IT Department, which was a recommendation from the Technology Integration Group that conducted the external report on IT services across campus.
It is recommended that UNM uses a centralized printer maintenance contract that covers all printers, copiers and other office supplies, according to the report. This would help UNM leverage pricing for things like toners and maintenance kits. It will also help in managing copying and printing costs.
“One of the things we’re looking at is how we can converge moving forward so that we have the same set of printing permissions,” Emmons said. “PawPrints would then be good everywhere, including the library.”
However, Emmons said students should be aware that this is not the end of the cuts.
“What we’re looking at is a combination of cuts to vacant salary lines by not filling them and cuts to our collections budget,” he said. “So we are concerned moving forward as well about how we can spend our money, which is why we’re looking forward to meeting with the IT folks to continue our talks about merging our printing.”
Going forward will not be easy, Emmons said.
“New Mexico is not doing well financially, so UNM has to do their part,” he said.
University Libraries and IT met last week to discuss the results of the TIG study, Emmons said. It is likely that printing services will have another cut, giving students a total of $10 across the board.
“The decision is not yet final, but yes, that is the intent.” Emmons said. “Based on upcoming cuts to the library’s budget, and the fact that we currently spend approximately $80,000 per year on our public printing.”
Sanchez said his department submitted a one-time funding request to the Student Fee Review Board to bring University Libraries under the PawPrints program.
SFRB is a committee of undergraduate and graduate students that meets every year to decide how over $12 million in student activity fees should be allocated around campus.
“We won’t hear anything regarding this until after the SFRB deliberations are completed and recommendations are made, which will be in November,” Sanchez said.
Sarah Trujillo is a news reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @sarahtweets_abq.
