Census Bureau zeroes in on student count on campus

College students have a reputation for being some of the most politically minded and community-oriented individuals, yet they may be unaware of one of the best ways to draw the government’s attention to their local area — the decennial census.

 

The 2010 census aims to count every person currently living in the United States, both citizens and non-citizens. The information gathered will be used to update population counts, which in turn will determine not only the distribution of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, but also how nearly $430 billion in federal funds will be disseminated.  

 

Census data are used to determine locations for schools, hospitals and other community resource centers, even shopping centers. This data will also be used for determining future government services and for planning purposes in case of a mass emergency. Most importantly for students, the data will help determine funding for education, including Title I grants.

 

Census Day is April 1, and planning for the 2010 census has been underway for years. In West Los Angeles, one of the U.S. Census Bureau’s main goals is to reach college students, considered as one of the hardest populations to pin down.

 

In the 2000 Census, the bureau, in looking at 42 different factors, believes that UCLA's student population was undercounted. But it's not clear by how much, said Henry Mendoza, U.S. Census partnership specialist for West Los Angeles.

 

That's why this year, UCLA "is getting our attention," Mendoza said.

 

“I believe the students’ environment and relatively mobile lifestyle make it difficult to secure a response,” said the Census Bureau official. “I believe confusion by families also contributes.”

 

Many college students believe they will be accounted for by their parents, but, in truth, they should be filling out their own census questionnaires and identifying their current campus address as their residence. “Wherever your regular residence is as of April 1, 2010, is where you should be counted,” Mendoza clarified.

 

This presents a unique challenge for large universities like UCLA, where many students are living on the Hill in residence halls or around Westwood in apartments, co-ops and Greek residences. So census specialists, called Group Quarter Enumerators, will hand-deliver the forms to students, beginning April 5. In the residence halls, they’ll be assisted by UCLA resident assistants.

 

“Unlike our normal, traditional housing units, in group quarters we will not mail out questionnaires. There’s no way to make sure they would get there,” said Hart Boykin, the local census office manager in Culver City.

 

All students need to do is fill out the simple, 10-question form, and then return it to the enumerators. Boykin noted the importance of having enumerators there to answer any questions that may arise. For those residents who are not present when the enumerators arrive, there will be e-mail reminders from the Office of Residential Life and from each floor’s resident assistant to mail the census forms back to the bureau.

 

Each individual’s responses will be kept confidential. It is against the law for the Census Bureau to share an individual’s questionnaire with anyone, including other federal agencies or law enforcement offices, census managers said.

 

“Throughout history, requests [for census data] from every level of security and law enforcement have been turned back by the courts. In each case those requests that got to the Supreme Court were rejected unanimously, upholding the security and sanctity of census data,” said Mendoza.

 

Students can help not only by spreading the word to friends and fellow students, but also by working for the census. “One of the key tenets of our success is that our count has a better chance of being complete if we hire people to work in the neighborhood in which they live,” Boykin said. And students reap the benefit: The Census Bureau is paying student workers from $12.75 to $20 an hour.