St. Olaf students united in mid-April to sign a petition requesting training for first-time census-takers on campus in 2020.
"It was really hard this year," said Stephen Brown '10, who filled out the census for the first time in 2010. "Not only was it time-consuming, but the questions were really unclear."
Brown started gathering signatures for the petition several days after the census was taken and found a wealth of support from students.
"I think the college would get a lot better response rate if they didn't just drop us into filling out the form without any preparation," said a Mohn resident who requested anonymity when criticizing the administration's census policy.
One of the biggest complaints among the petitioners was the racial background question.
"I wasn't really sure, so I had to go Google it and compare myself to the pictures. I ended up checking the ‘Other' box and writing ‘I don't know,'" Anders Anderson '13 said.
The training proposed by the student petitioners includes a two-hour session on the evening before the census is scheduled to be taken, with the session announced via multiple extremely long e-mails to the student body. Topics covered in the session would include how to break the questions up into manageable chunks and tips for filling out sections with more than two answers.
"Editor's note: this article appeared in the April 30, 2010 satire issue of the Messenger."
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