The Undergraduate Student Government of the University of Connecticut recently announced on Instagram that the money awarded to students for printing may be taken away. The post says that over three-quarters of the year’s print funding has already been spent, and available funding continues to dwindle.
“Although each student has $15 in their WEPA account, this money is not guaranteed,” the USG post stated. “[The amount] only serves as a spending limit to ensure the money is spent equitably.”
WEPA, the printing infrastructure UConn has installed, requires that students pay for each copy by using Husky Bucks or an electronic payment processor. USG allocates funding accrued from student fees for print funding and says that $70,000 was set aside this year for this purpose. At a $15 allocation for each undergraduate, just over 4,650 students could take full advantage—only about a fifth of the main campus’ enrollment according to UConn’s 2025 fact sheet.
According to the UConn ITS Knowledge Base, using WEPA to print a single-sided black and white copy costs 8 cents, while a double-sided sheet costs 15 cents. For color printing, the price increases by more than four times to 35 cents for a single-sided sheet and 68 cents for a double-sided page. The $15 “free printing gift” provided by USG is enough to print 42 sheets of colored paper or 187 sheets of black and white paper if spent completely.
“$57,000 out of $70,000 has been used thus far,” the Instagram post from April 2 stated. “Once the $70,000 is gone, the remainder of your $15 balance will disappear from your account.”
The arrangement USG describes could result in a student with a full $15 balance being unable to print any number of pages due to the coincident total printing bill the student population has garnered. Students are also forced to initially pay for prints that could potentially be defective or even blank, having to request a refund from WEPA directly—a process which may not provide additional funding back to the student if USG’s allocation was used.
In a message posted to the Student Daily Digest, USG claims that they actually allocate $76,000 annually, and have added an additional $10,000 to accommodate for the higher demand. The updated figure in that post marks that $63,637 was spent as of April 10.
“We have already added additional funds to account for higher spending, but are unable to contribute more,” that message stated.
USG re-established the “HuskyPrint” initiative in 2021, following the dismantling of UConn Praxis, which offered a similar student printing subsidy. The $15 limit amount being listed in combination with student-provided funds may be considered misleading.
“The funding for those pages was transferred to the WEPA balances of all undergraduates at UConn, so while it may appear as if money is being deducted from your WEPA balance, the funding actually came straight from USG,” said Dalton Hawie, the then-USG academic affairs director told the Daily Campus in 2021 following the expansion of service.
“Thanks to the USG Academic Affairs Committee, every undergraduate student can enjoy $15 of free printing on us!” a USG Instagram post from the start of the fall 2024 semester stated.
Some students who saw the post online added comments in surprise, expressing that oftentimes the burden of printing is mandated by teachers and classes—not necessarily a personal choice.
“Tell that to the prof who wants hard copies, doesn’t allow electronics including laptops, and that just made me print my 20 page paper – and it was a rough draft,” commented one user, receiving over 65 likes.
“We don’t want to print assignments,” said another user, with over 50 likes.
USG says that it won’t be able to provide funding to services including print funding unless it receives a $5 fee increase, from $45 to $50 per student per semester, and has cancelled funding for Tier II student organizations amongst downsizing other programs in the past due to budget constraints.
Students are encouraged to conserve printing whenever possible and make use of features to decrease the amount spent. An article by BiblioTech, a “Computers in Libraries” circular, says that some libraries offer free printing but often place limits on types or amounts of copies in addition to limiting that service because of mounting overhead and infrastructure costs.
“Notably, many systems – especially large urban libraries – put a strict limit on printing volume altogether, paid or free. This indicates they have experienced monopolization of the service even when fees are charged,” the article states.
For more information about USG’s Academic Affairs Committee, visit usg.uconn.edu/committees/academic-affairs.