With online access to the national census opening on March 12, Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication is leading the city in a campaign to get as many individuals from the University and the surrounding community to take the census as part of its first ever “Temple Census Action Day.”
A group of five Temple public relations students are mobilizing the Temple community as part of a national competition designed to get college students and undercounted communities to participate in the 2020 Census. The Bateman Competition is sponsored by the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) and engages colleges and universities throughout the country for creating the best public relations campaign against a common theme. This year’s focus is the U.S. Census and Temple is the only Philadelphia-based school in the competition.
The Temple campaign, entitled #10Minutesfor10 Years, focuses on taking 10 minutes to fill out the census, an act that will affect the next 10 years in the area. According to reports by the United States Census Bureau, one person filling out their census has an economic impact of $2,000 for their community. In 2010, 34% of North Philadelphia residents did not fill out their census, resulting in an economic loss of $163 million to the area.
“Without the census, things would look very different,” says Lauryn Edmondson, TU Bateman Team Member. “If the government doesn’t know the number of people living in an area, that area won’t receive as much funding, which will affect parks, schools, churches and more.”
Thus far during the Temple campaign, which began on February 10, the 2020 Temple Bateman team created a standtobecounted.org website, recruited Temple Men’s Basketball Coach Aaron McKie to record a public service announcement that premiered at last month’s Temple vs. Villanova game encouraging students to fill out the census, and have conducted outreach throughout the community. With the Temple Census Action Day, the team will be concentrating their efforts over a 24-hour push that begins with a Census Town Hall being sponsored by the Philly Counts Committee and the U.S. Census Bureau at the Liacouras Center on March 11, ongoing outreach throughout the day and culminating in an off-campus census fair focusing on the undercounted Latinx community at Esperanza College in North Philadelphia on March 12.
The 2020 Bateman Competition is a national public relations competition consisting of the top public relations students in the country. This is Temple’s third year competing, last year being recognized as one of the Top 20 campaigns in the country for their work with a diversity campaign.
About the Bateman Competition
The Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) Bateman Competition is a national competition consisting of nearly 70 top public relations colleges and universities in the United States. Each college or university that chooses to compete may form a team of up to five students that will work with a national client to create a campaign. At the end of a month-long campaign implementation period, each team will submit a final document with results to be judged by a PRSSA panel of professional practitioners and educators.