Campus insight
In the original works of the Brothers Grimm, the story “The Fisherman and his Wife” depicts a greedy woman requesting ever larger gifts from a magical flounder. The flounder initially grants the wife’s requests; first, the flounder yields physical necessities, then gives money and power to the woman. However, like characters in most morality tales, the fisherman’s wife becomes so greedy that one day she asks to be made godlike, and after doing so, the flounder returns her and her husband to their previous state of impoverishment. Like the generous flounder, EC’s Writing Center, located on the first floor of the Humanities Building, has offered printing during previous semesters, but due to increased budget cuts and a plethora of unreasonable requests, the service had to be shut down during the fall semester of 2011.
Like the greedy wife of the fisherman, students at EC initially printed items of appropriate length and content. Students soon began attempting to print nonacademic items and were making unreasonable demands, draining the center’s limited resources. Because of such misuse of already limited resources, the Writing Center was forced to remove printing from its list of services and current students suffer the hardships brought on by past transgressors.
Although the Schauerman Library prints for a nominal fee, because of its hours of operation, many students have had difficulties printing there. Students in classes starting at 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. suffer particularly from this problem of limited access, since the Schauerman Library opens at 8 a.m. Printing should be widely available on a campus that prides itself on accessibility. As of now, there are a few proposed solutions to the problem of printing on campus, but none has really taken hold. Like the fisherman’s wife, students at EC have been returned to a state of destitution when it comes to printing, and will have to find the “God” within themselves in order to facilitate their printing success. Without filling in the lack of resources with abundant personal effort, many students could find themselves floundering.
