It’s been a long time coming. Our trusty printer, recently dubbed “wheezy” by me, has hit the age where everything creaks and groans in protest.
There are times when only one page might print and, if you need more, it sometimes takes quite a bit of abuse to coerce everything into submission. After attempting to get one page to copy for 30 minutes, I realized that The Horizon has to be one of the top penny-pinching groups on campus.
Seriously, we have a fax machine, printer and AP Stylebooks that date back to the mid-’90s. We jerry-rig most of our broadcast lighting equipment together every week.
Every time we request new or updated materials, it’s more difficult than trying to pull a jaguar’s teeth.
The Horizon, as a group, consists of 26 people, and at least half of them utilize the cameras, printers and other office supplies on a weekly basis.
After taking all of this into consideration, I remembered that a certain group recently approved funds to purchase a $300 printer to replace their old one to save on ink costs.
How is it that one group can approve a $300 expenditure for a printer in one evening, yet we cannot get cameras or other desired office supplies without jumping through 17 hoops made of red tape?
While The Horizon is still using the bottom-of-the-barrel funding and ancient technology, yet still managing to put a newspaper and broadcast out every week, it’s evident that we are hard-working. I’d say we’re a positive contribution to our campus.
It would make more sense to support a group that shows a productive output every week rather than just meeting notes or plans to do something.
It would make more sense, but it also seems that anything that makes sense on this campus is taboo.
I would seriously like to see some of the secretaries and other offices use what we have dealt with for the past several years.
If they can put up with fritzy printers, malfunctioning computers and a limited supply of paper for both printer and fax machine for as long as we have, then maybe they would understand where my frustration lies.
It’s beyond frustrating to know that The Horizon is such a hated group among the campus officials that we can barely get enough funds to purchase a few much needed cameras, much less a new printer.
We love our printer and appreciate the hard work it does for us on Friday nights, but it’s hitting the age where it’s falling to pieces on us.
If people complained about The Horizon making errors before now, imagine if the printer stops all together.
We double- and triple-proof our pages to try and catch errors.
Sure, they slip by us on occasion, but we do our best to prevent that.
What would happen if I started sending messages to offices and staff around campus complaining of misspellings or grammatical errors? What if I stopped talking to everyone that made a mistake?
Well, that would mean that there would be no communication on campus and we would all never learn from mistakes.
Oh, wait. I forgot that the administration is perfect and there are zero errors.
I digress.
Just because The Horizon prints stories that some people wish weren’t printed, run cartoons that can be offensive to some people and occasionally make mistakes, doesn’t mean that it should be so terribly difficult to purchase supplies and equipment.
The Horizon has been around for more than 60 years. We aren’t going anywhere soon.
By GRACE STAMPER
Editor
gstamper@umail.iu.edu
