Tusculum students Ontario Price, Beth Bryant, and Darryl Henry, from left, show their Tusculum College student identification cards. They and 117 other Tusculum College students will use such student cards as IDs as they conduct a special door-to-door census to residences inside the Tusculum city limits on Wednesday, Sept. 3. The students will knock on doors at more than 700 residences in order to verify address listings and learn the names of the people who normally live at the addresses. Tusculum professors will supervise the census. If the census determines that Tusculum's population has increased, the city could gain more dollars from the state of Tennessee. (Tusculum College photo)

TC students to conduct special census Wednesday, Sept. 3, in City of Tusculum

Students from Tusculum College will go door-to-door to conduct a special census of residences inside the City of Tusculum on Wednesday, Sept. 3, between 5 and 7 p.m..

The special census is being undertaken at the request of the City of Tusculum in order to gain an accurate, current count of the number of residents inside the city limits. Tusculum city leaders hope that the special census will help generate revenue to offset a recent 9 percent cut in the amount of tax revenue the state shares with local governments.

If the special census shows an increase in population, the City of Tusculum could stand to receive additional state revenue because the number of citizens in a community determines the amount of state funding received. Each person counted represents $90 per year in revenue for the City of Tusculum.

The students conducting the census will go door-to-door to about 720 houses throughout the city, and will bear their Tusculum College student IDs as identification, along with copies of a memorandum from the Tusculum Board of Mayor and Commissioners.

Tusculum College professors will be assigned to groups of students to provide supervision. Most or all of the teams will be made up of two students each. The only information they will ask will be verification of the address and the names of people who normally reside at that address. All information given will be kept confidential and will be used only for the purpose of updating the 2000 census information.

The special census is the Nettie Fowler McCormick Service Day project for five "Our Lives in Community" classes. Nettie Fowler McCormick Service Day, named after a late-19th century benefactor of Tusculum College, is a time set aside each year for the entire campus community - students, faculty, and staff - to provide a day of service to the community. During last year's event, 803 Tusculum College students, faculty, and staff provided 4,015 hours of service in 46 different projects in Greene, Sullivan, and Washington counties.

In addition to the census, this year's projects range from providing tutoring at local schools to painting items for a display at a regional museum to partnering with an elementary school class to collect oral histories for a book about that school's surrounding community.

For more information about the census, Tusculum residents are asked to call the City Recorder's office at 638-6211 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., Monday through Friday.