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Cardinal Call 9 - 17

Podcast Director Oliver Gerharz is joined by the Daily Cardinal’s Elijah Pines to discuss his article on the recent closure of StudentPrint, an on-campus print shop run by students. They discuss the history of StudentPrint, the 23 employees laid off during the closure, and the services offered by StudentPrint’s replacement, the Registered Student Organization Print and Resource Center. University of Wisconsin-Madison ranked #1 public university by Washington Monthly - Kate Eaton Go Big Read book promotes disability advocacy as UW reckons with past - Bryna Goeking

Broadcast on:: 18 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

[music] Hello and welcome to Cardinal Call, your weekly dose of UW-Madison campus news from the Daily Cardinal Student newspaper. I'm your host, Oliver Gearhurst. On September 1st, the Wisconsin Union laid off the entire 23-person staff of student print, shutting the on-campus print shop down after 50 years of service. Student print was replaced by a new self-service shop called the registered student organization Print and Research Center, which we referred to as RSO Print for the rest of the story. Today, we're joined by the Daily Cardinals Elijah Pines to discuss his article on the recent closure. Elijah, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. So what kind of services did student print offer to students? Well before they were self-service centered, they used to do a lot of advanced printing that the average person wouldn't be able to do. Specifically for RSOs on campus, they would do bulk orders of stickers, brochures, button making, t-shirts, flyers, anything in large quantities that the average person cannot do or does not want to do. So a general thing I know is it's a pretty high level of skill. It's things that the average person, like you said, just can't really do. So how is that going to be affected when it switches to a self-service model? Wisconsin Union has been pretty vague as to what a self-service model looks like. They have listed the specific services. There's black and white printing, color printing, large format, button printing, postcard. However, what that looks like, will there be off-site assistance? They've not said. Is that a reduction in services compared to what used to be offered by student print? It's a significant reduction in services. A lot of the things that student print used to do was specialize in more things that people would not be able to do on their own. What are some specific services that will no longer be offered under the new self-service shop? So they're no longer offering things like stickers, brochures, business cards, t-shirts. One of the students who worked there said that one of the big things that he's worried about is bulk orders because sometimes RSOs will ask for 500 flyers and people just don't want to sit by a printer waiting to cut that out, waiting for it to print. So can you tell me a little bit more about the history of the ownership of student print? Yeah. So student print was originally founded at the '70s as just a normal regular business that some students worked at. But in the '90s, they owned by ASM. And ASM, that stands for the Associated Students in Madison, right? Yes. Student print was owned by ASM from about the '90s to the pandemic. But during the pandemic, like lots of businesses, the student print suffered. So in 2021, they were bought out by the union. Can you tell me a little bit more about why the union chose to close student print? So in the original email to workers, the union said that the reasons behind the sudden closure was academic trends, consumer behavior changes, a duplication of services on campus and finances. However, a lot of workers felt like some of those reasons weren't that clear, especially academic trends and duplication of services on campus. I was going to ask about those. Do you have any idea what either of those things means? No, because what other services provides cheap, accessible printing to the RSOs on campus. That doesn't really exist. No. That doesn't really exist. But in email to the Carm-Dole, they clarified that in general, it's just because of a changing printing needs on campus. However, workers said that since the union bought out, the student print, they have only been getting more and more busy over the years. Can you tell me a little bit more about what happened to the 23 student employees of student print who were laid off at the start of this month? So the union offered jobs to all the 23 employees who wanted to seek it out, so no worker is left hanging. However, they were offered jobs within the union, and that includes food service, desk work, things that aren't really typical of what you would find at student print. Yeah, so they offered jobs, but not really in the same way that they had them, which is, I can imagine that could be disappointing to some of those former employees. It's very disappointing. A lot of workers expressed great grief of it. It was really such a unique experience for them. It's basically one of the only things on campus that allows students to run a business. A lot of the workers there weren't even doing printing, per se. They were just running businesses, they were doing inventory management, they were building brand, marketing, all these different things that were actually, you know, not something that a lot of students get the opportunity to do on campus. So what did the union have to say about the closure? The union said that the new RSO Print Center will be a lot more convenient for students in RSOs. So is there anything else that you learned over the course of your reporting that stuck out to you about this story? I think a lot of students on campus didn't really know what the student print is. I'm sure we're all familiar of where it was located as that big blue sign on a library mall, but it really was an important institution on campus. They pretty much provided so many things. They helped distribute the bus pass every semester. They helped design the student org fair maps and the guidelines of that. They really were just like a great bridge between RSOs and the students on campus. Well, thanks for coming on this week, Elijah. Thank you for having me. In other campus news, Washington Monthly, a non-profit newspaper ranked UW-Madison as the top public university in the country, honest, that I released this past August. The rankings released by Washington Monthly are based on what each college does for the country in terms of social mobility, research, and public service. UW-Madison plays very highly in both the research and public service categories. In other news, each year, UW-Madison selects a book to hand out to the student body as part of their Go Big Read initiative. This year, the university selected Rebecca Tossig's memoir, Sitting Pretty. The book chronicles Tossig's experiences growing up and living as a wheelchair user. Tossig will visit the school for a panel discussion and keynote speech in mid-October. In campus sports news, the Wisconsin Badgers were defeated by the Alabama Crimson Tide this Saturday, losing 42 to 10. During the game, quarterback Tyler Van Dyke sustained a knee injury that will keep him out for the remainder of the 2024 season. Backup quarterback Braden Locke and the rest of the Badgers will take the field on the 28th for a game against the USC Trojans. This has been the Cardinal Call, created by UW-Madison Student Journalists. Check out more news and stories at DailyCardinal.com. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]