ITHACA, N.Y. –– By mid August, colleges and universities across the country are expected to return census data and make sure their students are counted, a task that is now made more difficult as students have returned home due to COVID-19.
In Tompkins County, nearly 21% of the population is made up of undergraduate students alone at Cornell and Ithaca College –– a percentage that could heavily impact federal funding the county receives in the future.
Census program data is also the determinant factor for the allocation of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the boundaries for congressional districts, state legislative districts, school districts, and voting precincts.
“The two traditional things you think about with the census and the need to have a complete count is one –– both state and federal funding is apportioned by population and if we’re undercounted we won’t get our fair share of various grant programs, everywhere from local construction to help for our local colleges and universities,” said Michael Lane, Tompkins County legislator and chair of the complete census count committee. “The other is the redistricting for the county level and the city level but most importantly Congress and our state legislature. Those are all reapportioned after the census and will affect how we are counted.”
Municipal budgets could be deprived of the resources to repair roads and bridges and other necessary infrastructure should an accurate account of residents fail to happen.
“There are all these formulas that come from the federal government for revenue to get our fair share of our taxes back. In terms of transportation, affordable housing, even road repair. When the census does a count, it determines those revenues,” said City of Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick. “If we are undercounted we will not receive our fair share of tax revenue for the next ten years.”
Because of the high impact of an accurate count, local colleges have taken steps to try and ensure their students are accounted for, especially those that reside off-campus.
Ithaca College, Cornell and Tompkins Cortland Community College have all taken to putting together a “group quarters response” on behalf of students living on campus. That response will be somewhat limited, outside a basic headcount.
“The federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibits us from sharing the data with any third party. So we’re working with the census to provide them with the data that we can personally identify and attach to individual students,” said Doreen Hettich-Atkins, the director of strategic planning and administration at Ithaca College.
Under the law, universities cannot provide race and gender information about their students as part of their “group quarters response,” but are working to provide the general statistics on race and gender, unattached to student names.
There is no way for local universities to submit information on behalf of off-campus students.
“Off-campus, there is no way for Cornell to report on the students because we don’t have housing contracts with them. They live in the community, so they have to respond individually,” Kate Supron, campus-community liaison for Cornell said.
More than half of 15,043 Cornell undergraduate students live off-campus. Additionally, 94% of the 6,284 Cornell graduate students live off-campus. 6,200 undergraduates were in attendance of Ithaca College this past year ––about a third of which lived off-campus according to Hettich-Atkins.
To spread the word about filling out census information, Cornell has sent out a campus-wide email, messaged parents to urge their students to register in Tompkins, run several social media campaigns and this week will start sending out targeted messages to different units including the Public Service Center, the Student Assembly, Off-Campus Living and Cornell Votes.
IC has taken a similar approach, sending out a campus-wide message reminding students to fill out their census, and taking to social media to spread the word.
Off-campus students at all local colleges and universities are advised to designate one member of their apartment to complete the Census for all who reside there. You won’t have a “code” unless you’ve received the mail from your apartment, but you can complete the Census by entering your address. If you’re not sure who from your department has completed the Census, each individual member should submit their own Census information in the online portal.
Students who live off-campus, but have already been counted at home, should fill out the census again, but with their Ithaca information –– duplicates can be filtered out by census employees.
According to the Census Bureau website, “the planned completion date for data collection for the 2020 Census is July 31, 2020, however, that date can and will be adjusted if necessary as the situation evolves in order to achieve a complete and accurate count.”