To the imaginative writers of Knott Hall: I read your Observer article on Saturday and was honestly heartbroken over your sorrows. How could we live in such a cruel word where honest men and women could not poop with the peace of mind that they would always be able to look up and see somewhat humorous, too-completely-derogatory jokes and fake articles posted next to imaginative combinations of philosophical one-liners and the F-word. Stall notes are a quintessential part of the Notre Dame experience, right alongside trying to find an outlet in the Hesburgh library, walking through puddles thanks to non-existent drainage on rainy days and, most recently, complaining about print quota.
Your sleuthing and investigatory skills are unquestionable and without equal as you have discovered OIT’s true nature and intentions. This strategy to “nickel and dime students and bury them beneath a mountain of red tape” can now be added to the list of OIT’s other conspiratorial actions including the disappearance of the missing Watergate Tapes, the forging of the moon landings, assistance in the Kennedy assassination and the closing of every freaking parking lot at Notre Dame (really, Parking Committee).
I mean it’s not like the OIT printing budget had a deficit of almost $100,000 last year or anything, which it had to make up by cutting things out of other parts of its program. And it’s not like this is due to the fact that since 2005,- printing has almost quadrupled on this campus, which outpaces many other of our peer institutions, or because the cost of a sheet of paper is predicted to go up an additional 12 percent just this year alone. Furthermore, OIT’s attack on our “daily dump” printing liberties could possibly be influenced by the fact that, even with all of these increases in expenses, its budget has not been increased in years.
But you have failed to notice the most insidious aspect of their dastardly plot. The fact that they were able to force you to print out a stall notes for almost every single day of the week; as I presume the name “daily dump” infers. Seeing how there are three floors in Knott and most likely around 10 spots on each floor that one puts stall notes, OIT was able to force you to print out almost 30 stall notes every day!!! This baffles the mind! “Of course!” one would say, “Anyone who printed out 30 pages a day would run out of print quota in no time!”
But in all honesty, the fact that OIT has failed to execute their own policy for letting you buy more print quota is a problem; you're 100 percent correct. My issue is that ever since the print quota changed, people have been attacking OIT nonstop like they are some group of horrible people. It’s not OIT’s fault that the print quota went down. If you want to blame someone, blame the administration for not giving OIT a greater budget. Articles like yours make good points, but if we really want to have any real change in the printing situation, we need to make the administration give OIT the resources it needs to provide us with the service we want.
Chris DeSapio
junior
Nov. 3
