Census Reaches Out to Undergraduate Students

Census Day 2010—April 1, the deadline to turn in the decennial United States population measure form—has come and gone. But some groups, such as the large populations of students living on college campuses, remain to be counted.

COUNTING THE COLLEGE KIDS

The ten-question 2010 Census—reduced to just seven questions for college students—reached mailboxes across the country last month, but just began to arrive in Harvard undergraduates’ mailboxes yesterday. “People should be counted where they live and sleep most of the year,” the form states, and for most Harvard undergraduates, that place is Harvard.

An e-mail sent campus-wide informed undergraduates of the one-week deadline to complete their own Census forms. The University is allowing students to return these forms to their respective houses’ offices or, for freshmen, to the basement of Weld Hall.

According to Laura M. Waldon, the LGBT and Census on Campus Outreach Partnership Specialist for the Census Bureau’s Boston Regional Office, college students are among the populations that are most difficult to reach, along with non-English speaking people and those in trouble with the government.

“College students have the lowest return number,” Waldon said, attributing low participation rates to confusion regarding correct state of residency and a failure to understand the important consequences of the data collected from census forms.

Areas such as school campuses are categorized by the Census Bureau as “group quarters.” In such situations, the way in which students are counted is left up to the administrations of various institutions. Options include distributing the forms individually to all its students’ mailboxes—Harvard’s chosen method—or allowing Census numerators to set up count stations on campus.

Some Harvard students have been aiding in the Census collection process.

“We’re trying to promote civic engagement in a non-partisan way,” said Elizabeth J. Newton ’11, the IOP Community Action Committee Chair who has been working on Census outreach this semester.

Jenny Ye ’13 has also been coordinating Census outreach events, such as tabling in front of the Science Center.

“Even though Harvard students are always busy...it’s important that [Mass.’s] count is accurate so that it can receive that representation and federal funding that it deserves,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson.

A CRUCIAL COUNT, A COMMUNITY EFFORT

At the municipal level, the effort to make sure that Census forms representing the Cambridge population are filled out is, to a large extent, driven by members of the community.

According to the City of Cambridge Web site, the Census return rate for Cambridge as of yesterday was 56 percent, five percentage points lower than the current overall Mass. participation rate.

The city’s effort began in September of last year with the formation of the Cambridge Complete Count Committee, a group comprised of city management staff and leaders from different community organizations.

Tests for people attempting to join the Complete Count local liaison group have been conducted for over a year on a rolling basis, according to Waldon. The group’s key roles have been to publicize widely that the census is coming, that the census process is easy, that all collected data is confidential even to other government bureaus, and that an accurate count is crucial for the well-being of community programs and services.

Thomas J. Lucey, Harvard’s director of community relations for Cambridge and a member of Cambridge’s Complete Count Committee, said the Cambridge Election Commission approached him to serve as “a point of contact” between Harvard and Cambridge, because the city needed assistance in counting all of Harvard’s students. But according to Lucey, Harvard and Cambridge have each been working independently to push people to return their forms.

In addition community outreach groups, the Census Bureau has heavily employed paid advertisements in cities across the country this year.

“10 Questions. 10 Minutes. Make a difference!” exclaims a poster plastered to the side of an MBTA bus. Such advertisements are ubiquitous in Cambridge—some cars on the Red Line of the T have been entirely filled with Census ads.

According to Waldon, the 2000 Census marked the first time the Bureau employed widespread advertising.

“They found the first increase in accuracy,” she said. “After that they have done a much larger scale of paid advertisement to help increase awareness.”

—Staff writer Rediet T. Abebe can be reached at rtesfaye@college.harvard.edu.