The 2010 census counting will begin within the coming months.

“We are required to take a census every 10 years,” said Larry Courtney, the local census office manager.

Courtney said census counting is crucial for the city of Bowling Green because the final number decides how many representatives Ohio will have in the House of Representatives, as well as the Ohio legislative district.

“Congress will use it for demo info to determine infrastructure, like roads, hospitals, numbers of doctors and schools,” Courtney said.

The University will play a very important role in the census counting, he said.

“The campus is such a large part of the county, not only from a student population point, but also from the number of employees,” said Brady Gaskins, coordinator of assessment and planning in the office of the vice president of student affairs. “The University was one of the targeted areas where the census wanted to concentrate efforts to make sure that everyone gets counted as effectively and efficiently as they can.”

Courtney said the census counting process will include interviews with housing and hall directors, as well as resident advisers to make sure everyone in their areas are counted.

Gaskins said Residence Life is helping out the local census bureau by making sure that every student, on and off campus, has access to the 10-question survey when the time comes for counting to begin.

“The census [bureau] compiles all the questionnaires and provides enough copies for our on-campus population and then we help disseminate the questionnaire to our on-campus students via their hall director and their resident adviser,” he said.

Sundeep Mutgi, president of Undergraduate Student Government, said the census bureau reached out to USG for help to make sure the census questionnaires are available to every student.

“We’re always trying to get things out to the students,” Mutgi said. “It’s important because the more people we have, the more eligible we are for different grants and so the more money we have from grants, the more we can improve the city that we live in.”