HIGHER EDUCATION The r\licrngu )a ~v West Virginia towns to include " students in census A conscientious clothesline By Stephanie Taylor The DaiUlv Athenacun MORGANTOWN, WV. (U-WIRE) -As the 2000 census approachcs, both Morgantown and Huntington are trying to benefit with the help of their universi- ty students. This year the two cities are planning to include the students of Marshall University and West Virginia University, respectively, in their 2000 census. The students will cause each of the cities' populations to increase dramatically if included. Morgantown wants a recorded popu- lation of 50,000, and if it reaches that level, the city will qualify for more fed-. eral grants and progams. The possible benefits can be looked at in two ways. The first is Morgantown could receive a richer database and a higher level of sta- tistical analysis. "This will cause investors, real estate and banks to track the growth in popula- tion and influence economic develop- ment," explained city manager Dan Boroff. The second category of benefits is that Morgantown could qualify for more special programs that will help out transportation, employment train- ing and urban and housing develop- ment. The exact amount of money and benefits Morgantown would actually receive is based on the projects it would do. Huntington is planning to include the students of Marshall University in its census. But Huntington is more interest- ed in getting an accurate census count. "Simply, Marshall University stu- dents are residents of Huntington and should be counted," Huntington Mayor Jean Dean said. Other than having an accurate census count, Huntington, like Morgantown, could receive more federal money, which it plans to use for community and economic development. Huntington will also receive a better class statistical rank- ing. Huntington plans to accomplish this goal by working with Marshall University to assist in encouraging the students to fill out the census papers for Huntington. Dean said the students should be responsible enough to fill out the census papers on their own. But is counting university students as part of Morgantown's and Huntington's census legal? "Not only is it legal, it is procedural," said John Willse, media specialist for the regional census bureau out of Detroit. According to the guidelines devel- oped for the decennial census, college students who live away from home are to be counted where they attend college. On the other hand, students who live with their parents while attending col- lege should be counted as part of their parental home. The census bureau explained that stu- dents will not be counted twice -- once at college and then again at their parental home. To ensure this, the census papers themselves will state that college stu- dents are not to be included as part of their parental home. Since the student population could benefit the two cities so much, some people wonder why Morgantown and Huntington haven't counted students before. "In the 1990 census, only a small number of students filled out census papers," said Boroff. Boroff further said that this year. Morgantown plans to have a committee to encour- age a large majority of the students to fill out census papers for Morgantown.