Do you know how important the U.S. Census is?

The Bateman Case Study team, which is made up of public relations majors and minors at Ashland University, are currently working to inform and educate students at AU and people in the Ashland community about the importance of the census.

The Bateman team has been assigned the U.S. Census Bureau by the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) for their campaign this year and are hoping to make a difference not only in Ashland but spread awareness about the census in every community.

The census is important because everyone needs to be counted for, one time and in the right location. If that goal is not met, then it can have financial repercussions on states and congressional representation.

Shawn Orr, advisor for the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) group at AU and the advisor for the students involved in this study at said, “there are all sorts of ways that people are counted, we want to make sure that every American is counted only once and counted in the correct location.”

Orr said Ohio loses roughly $1200 each year for a decade for every person that is not counted… two million children ages four and younger were missed in the 2010 census count. Therefore, Ohio lost a lot of money because of the children that were not accounted for.

The Bateman team will be competing against schools from all over the country over their plans to carry out their campaign.

The AU team decided to target audiences that are on and off campus students, and to target one hard-to-count group in the area: the Amish community. With the Amish community, students involved are still working on the initial research and are doing multiple interviews in that population.

“I really like the Bateman Case study program because it allows hands on experience for PRSSA members,” junior Juliet Touma said, who is a member of the Bateman team. “It’s given me so much knowledge about running a campaign.”

The campaign will run from March 1-20 with the team still researching and coming up with ideas to promote how important the census is, and to get students at Ashland and people in the community involved and making sure they fill out their census’s. They are using social media, and even 88.9 WRDL to get the word out and are sharing educational posts to spread awareness.

This opportunity for the students here at Ashland is very important to not only the mission, but for students to get real life experience in their chosen career.

“Providing opportunities for our students to get involved in real world projects is critical to their success as young professionals,” Orr said.

For more information about the Bateman Case Study team, or more information about why the census is important you can follow their Instagram and Snapchat @Count_AU_In.