The Academic Computing Center is desperately trying to solve a budget crunch, one that stems, it claims, from frivolous paper usage by students.

The ACC began its efforts to solve this problem earlier this year by sending out e-mail notices to students who print excessively, and asking those students to justify their usage.

The ACC has noticed that students will print off a 20-page paper, find mistakes such as spelling, and print off a new, revised copy.

"It is a known fact because [students] are too lazy to even throw away, better yet recycle their old papers, and leave their mess for everyone to see. If you are going to be wasteful at least hide it," said one student.

So where does this leave the ACC? As of the end of December, they had used 75% of their supplies budget. At that time last year they had used only 54%.

" We are seeing a dramatic increase of usage in public labs," said ACC director Roberta Lembke. "We want to try to get everyone to be more careful, to get faculty involved by telling their students to print off papers using both sides of the paper, and for students to do things such as use spell check."

There seems to be another problem besides students printing off high numbers of papers - reams and boxes of paper are being stolen.

When asked why the ACC leaves reams of paper for students to abundantly use and even steal, Lembke said, "We will not ration paper, we don't want to make things inconvenient. We haven't seen much ripping off of paper in the dorms so much as in the public computer labs."

Now each piece of paper is being logged to see where paper is being stolen.

As for next year, the ACC is trying to develop a plan so problems such as these don't occur.

There are three strategies the ACC may employ next year: leave the system as it is now, providing endless amounts of paper out for students to use and steal; or revert back to the system implemented two years ago, when the printers were located at the front desk and students had to pay for each sheet of paper.

The third possibility would involve a third party, Xerox. Xerox would provide an 'everything machine' that would include a fax, printer and copier. The problem with this is that the ACC would not have the means to fix the machines, which would require Xerox repairmen to come every time one breaks down.