INDIANAPOLIS — Posters encourage Indiana University students to participate in the 2010 U.S. Census. A Web site reminds them to complete the forms at school and to not be included with their parents. Even the dean is helping out, sending them e-mails stressing the importance of being counted.
There's only one thing missing: the forms.
More than 11,000 students living in residence halls on the Bloomington campus haven't been counted because of delays getting forms to the school. Officials are now scrambling to get a tally before students leave campus in early May.
"Our students have been patiently waiting, wondering when the forms are going to arrive," said Pat Connor, executive director of Indiana University's Residential Programs and Services. "They've been asking about them."
The forms should have been available by April 1, but census officials weren't able to get enough to cover the entire campus, said Chicago-based U.S. Census Bureau spokesman Jim Accurso.
Forms were expected to arrive this week, but that leaves IU well behind other Indiana colleges and increases the risk that students — distracted by final exams during their final three weeks of class — might be missed.
The count taken once every 10 years is used to distribute U.S. House seats and more than $400 billion in federal aid. It's also used in federal tuition grant and loan programs, so a thorough tally of college students in 2010 can mean more money for higher education in Indiana down the road.
At other Indiana schools, census counts have been in process for more than a week. Many have finished or are near completion.
Students at Purdue University have their forms, while students at the University of Notre Dame returned theirs by a school-set Tuesday deadline, said Grant Woodman, associate director of housing and residence life. Students at Ball State University in Muncie have also already been counted, said spokeswoman Gail Werner.
At Ball State University, the count in residence halls was made last week, with members of the census bureau working with residence hall directors, an officer of the U.S. census said.
For some students, having the university count for them was a good idea.
"I really don't care, because I don't know how the census works anyway," freshman photojournalism major Morgan Crouse said. "I think it's good they counted us, it saved us the work and I think I wouldn't have done it myself."
Other students thought that having the university fill the forms for them was not fair.
"I don't think they should have filled it for us, it's like they took what we had to say," freshman education major Jeremy Flick said.
More members of the census bureau are working this week to make sure students living off-campus in Muncie submitted their forms.
IU plans to distribute census forms through campus mailboxes to students living in residence halls. Students will fill out the forms and return them to a central collection site to be picked up by census workers.
Junior Jamie Smith, 21, a resident assistant at IU's Ashton Hall, doubts the census will be able to compete with year-end projects and exams for students' attention.
"I think it's going to affect participation greatly," she said of the forms' late arrival. "People don't want to do little side things, when they already have too many other little side things going on."
Freshman David Kilpatrick said he doesn't think interest in the census was high among his fellow students in the first place.
He said he'll be busy preparing for the Little 500 race and probably won't fill it out anyway.
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