This is hugely nerdy, but I actually just had a conversation with my mom about where I should be counted for the 2010 Census. Counting college students is a bit tricky, but the form makes it pretty clear that parents aren’t supposed to count college students not living at home. This will be my parents’ first census with a kid in college, so I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page. Here’s how the conversation went:
Me: Have you gotten your census form yet?
Mom: No, why?
Me: Well, it says here that you shouldn’t count college students, so I just wanted to make sure you and Dad didn’t count me on yours.
Mom: Oh, no worries. I figured you’d be proactive and fill your own out. Your sister, on the other hand…
Me: She’s one of the people the census takers come after?
Mom: Oh yeah. Instructions be damned, I would have counted her here if she’d been in college during the last census. It’s not like she wouldn’t have ended up back here anyway.
We then had a nice chat about the vagaries of counting people like college students, active military personnel, prison inmates, etc. As someone who’s had to vote twice by absentee ballot (from Columbia in 2006 and London in 2008) in each of the last major elections and uses the word “home” to both my parents’ house and college apartment, I’m not really sure how to weigh on this one. Theoretically, it makes sense to count students as residents of their college towns. Even if they’re here on a temporary basis, most colleges have a fairly steady enrollment, hence the population of a place like Columbia remains fairly consistent.
Then again, there’s a difference between someone like me, who really identifies as a resident of Columbia and has no intention of returning to Kansas City (or, heaven forbid, Lee’s Summit), and my sister, who was perfectly happy moving back in with Mom and Dad after graduation. For now, at least, my roots are in Columbia: I’m registered to vote here, I care about community issues, I visit the same dog park most weekends. I don’t think I’ll still be here in 2020. But for now, this is home. Kansas City is this alien place I visit sometimes, where I know all the streets but not what I’m doing there.
So what’s the solution? If you’re planning on moving back to your hometown in six months or two years, do you let your parents count you there? Or do you do what I did, and accept that here’s where you are on April 1, 2010, even if it won’t be where you are in 2011?