Students: Fill out your census forms!

The state demographer’s office is leaning heavily on Minnesota’s students to fill out their census forms and help ensure that the state retains all eight of its seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

State Demographer Tom Gillaspy has declared that Minnesota will cede one of its congressional seats to some other state unless it can somehow scrounge up 1,100 more residents than the U.S. Census Bureau currently believes live here.

Gillaspy has expressed confidence that by getting an accurate census count among such hard-to-count populations as immigrants, snowbirds and college students, those additional 1,100 residents should be easy to find.

In that spirit, his office began coordinating strategies for an accurate student count in discussions last month with Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and University of Minnesota officials.

“Our concern has always been that young people tend not to answer or respond to the census as well as people who are older,” says Barbara Ronningen, a demographer in St. Paul’s State Demographic Center. “We wanted to make sure that college students understand how important it is for them to answer.”

Notably downplayed in the messaging being sent out to students are appeals to help the state retain its congressional seats. Instead, the emphasis is on naked self-interest.

In a news release describing the student-enumeration initiative, the Demographic Center stressed that students should understand census data:

• Helps employers understand where the next generation of workers is coming from, a factor that influences recruitment efforts;

• Is used by students and faculty for reports, statistical profiles and research projects;

• Helps determine funding for college and university tuition grant and loan programs;

• Helps establish fair-market housing rents and enforcement of fair lending practices;

• Helps planners develop recreational programs such as playgrounds, parks and trails, and youth, adult and senior programs; and,

• Is used to select bus routes and rail stops during public transportation planning.

“We had a conversation here about this,” Vargas says. The message “has to appeal to students and their pocketbooks. It has to appeal to their future, which is getting a job right after college in these difficult economic times. And the census, very fortunately, can be relatable that way.”

Vargas says that next week, the demographer’s office plans to extend its initiative with appeals for help from mayors of college towns and the communities surrounding them that are home to so-called “commuter students” – those not living in on-campus dormitories.

Commuter students, Vargas says, are a particular problem population for census counters. That’s because they often think that because they are renting, their landlord will receive and fill out census forms on their behalf, which is not true, Vargas says. The forms will be received at their residences, and must be filled out by the students themselves.

In addition, many students invite friends to live with them in off-campus housing, violating the terms of their rental agreement. Often, they think that census workers might reveal that secret to landlords. But that, too, is false, Vargas says.

“A key message is that the landlord will not find out about your living situation,” he says. “That information is confidential.”

The possibility of students not getting counted isn’t just theoretical. In 2000, Ronningen says, students in Moorhead were not counted for the census until after they had scattered at the end of their school term. That meant many were never counted as Moorhead residents at all, a costly oversight to the community and its colleges.

“A huge amount of money is allocated based on census counts, and students are the recipients of some of those dollars in terms of student aid and educational funding from the federal government,” Ronningen says. “For that reason, it is very important that they get counted.”

Ronningen says state demographers are hopeful that efforts to get young people counted this year will benefit from the high rates of student involvement witnessed during the 2008 presidential campaign, less than two years ago.

“We are hoping we can build on that with the census,” she says. “While it is a bit of a different operation, it also is civic engagement. We hope we can translate that into an excellent response rate to the census is 2010.”

For more information about Census 2010 in Minnesota, visit mn2010census.org on the Internet or contact Mario Vargas at 651-201-2479 or mario.vargas@state.mn.us