TCNJ

28 The College of New Jersey Magazine go from your mouth to my ears and then to the app on the iPhone and into the census database." Still, I'm the government seeking information about you. I could see drapes closing as I approached or people who would not answer the door even though you could hear a television on or kids playing. And when they do answer the door, you know that look on somebody's face — the look when you run into somebody who you would rather not have run into. And they say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I really don't have time now." And they shut the door. The census is the federal government taking a head count of the country. We are trying to impress upon people that they have a civic duty to add their information to the census database because population size, and how mobile we are as a population, im- pacts what we get from the current $1 trillion in federal funding. I'd lead with that and then use U.S. congressional representation as the second most important reason. I've been a Hunterdon County resident for 35 years. A gentleman I interviewed in Delaware Township had moved there from the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. After mentioning his old address, I said, I signed up to be a U.S. Census taker in January 2020. The pandemic pushed things back by almost four months, so I started working the first week of August, mostly in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. The reason I had this job is because people hadn't answered their mailed questionnaires. We were paid $21 an hour to go to those homes in hopes of getting the most accurate count of the population. I did my own census form online the day I got the mailing in March. I do some lobbying and government affairs consulting, but mostly I'm a teacher, an adjunct in TCNJ's political science department. I've taught courses in health policy, American government, and lobbying, among others. I wanted to work for the census for the sociological experience. I wanted to understand the attitudes of people living in the U.S. and their skepticism toward the census and toward government in general. But I also learned a lot about people's lives. I had a satchel with the big U.S. Census logo on it. Census takers, or enumerators, were required to wear that over our shoulder so people could see who we were. We also had a Census ID and an information sheet in English and Spanish to hand out. I told people their answers were confidential: "They at a residence in Hunterdon County's Kingwood Township and said, "I'm Bill Healey with the U.S. Census." The owner shouted through his doorbell speaker, "Get off my [expletive] property." rang the doorbell

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