At Grand Valley State University, finding a printer is often no easy task for students. Waiting in line is annoying for everyone, whether you are rushing to class or have time to spare. Currently, GVSU has printers in a variety of buildings on the Allendale and Pew campuses – from the library to the computer labs, students have many options.

However, students who frequent the Kirkhof Center in Allendale and the DeVos Center in Grand Rapids will soon see an additional printer in these locations. The Student Senate is working with the IT department to act on students’ demands for more resources.

Though these new printing stations will not be installed until an unspecified future date, what the university should be working on is the printing network itself. With the opening of the Mary Idema Pew Library and the Seidman building downtown, the university has made a move toward more privacy and convenience for printing.

Students can send their documents to the printing system before they get on campus. Those who log on to a school computer also have to log in or scan their student IDs when they get to a printer, at least in some areas on campus, so all their documents are in one place – instead of students shuffling through many other documents to figure out who printed what.

While this system should be more convenient, and it is when it works, there are many times when students send their documents to the GVSU print network only to find out that the network is down, some of the documents didn’t send, etc. Students get frustrated when they cannot print needed materials for class, due to a temporarily closed station, unavailability of IT personnel at that time or the print network malfunctioning across campus.

The library has many great and innovative resources for students, faculty and staff to use and enjoy. While the efforts of the university and the IT department to make printing more convenient for students are appreciated, work should still be done to make it more reliable. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending half an hour sending all the documents you need for class to the printing network only to find out none of it went through.