Get Counted

Britney Spears may have found a new love for math and counting in her popular song “3,” but the U.S. Census Bureau has long loved counting and is doing it yet again as part of the 2010 Census’s count of Americans—and we're getting in on the action.

Tomorrow morning's copy of The Crimson has a series of articles on the U.S. Census. We're taking a look at what professors predict the Census will show about demographic shifts in America as well as what the Census Bureau and Harvard students are doing to reach out to students to make sure everyone is counted.

What do you have to do to be counted? All students should have been given a Census form in their campus mailboxes earlier this week or will receive one soon. Students need to fill out the form and then turn it into their Building Manager’s Office during business hours. Freshmen can turn the form into Yard Operations in the basement of Weld at any time of the day.

The forms are due on Tuesday, April 13.

Are you a cynical Harvard student and going to ask why you should do it? Because it is only seven questions long for students and because it is the primary way governments know how to distribute services and how Washington distributes over $400 billion in federal money. Funding for everything from the roads to the buses to law enforcement is affected by the Census, and if you don’t participate, less money comes to the Harvard area.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.