Final Jeopardy edition: Who was Lafayette?
What is West Lafayette’s real population? What is the county courthouse policy on the Nativity scenes? What is no change in vax policy at Purdue? And what is … hometown Final Jeopardy?
This and that at the start of the week …
WEST SIDE READY TO CHALLENGE CENSUS?: Interesting take from The Associated Press on Monday about how some college towns – including Bloomington, home of Indiana University – were looking to challenge the 2020 U.S. Census results. Their beef: Too many campus towns were shorted population, thanks to universities emptying dorms and sending students home in March 2020 as the pandemic started to bloom.
As the AP report pointed out, that didn’t affect on-campus housing terribly, because the census took into account headcounts provided by schools in dorms. Off-campus housing, tougher to gauge, were a different story as official count day pushed past April 1 and into summer 2020.
One example, from the AP report by reporter Mike Schneider:
“The 2020 census put the city of Bloomington at 79,168 residents, a decline from about 80,405 in 2010. City officials expected a 2020 count of 85,000 to 90,000 residents. The nation's headcount was just beginning in March 2020 when schools including Indiana University told students not to return to campus in response to the spread of the coronavirus. Most of the university's 48,000 students were on spring break.
“‘It’s just not a credible number,’ Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton said. ‘The simplest explanation is that the count was done after the university told students, ‘Don’t return to Bloomington and go back to your parents’ homes.′ I’m not blaming anybody. The university did the right thing to protect its students.’”
What happened in West Lafayette, then?
West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis said the city’s results didn’t come close to expectations.
Dennis said West Lafayette could be in with other university communities, asking for adjustments in a process where population drives any number of state and federal funding questions.
“They definitely seem low compared to the 2019 numbers,” Dennis said.
The 2019 and 2020 estimates the U.S. Census Bureau posted for West Lafayette were more than 51,000 – with a 51,605 population estimate just ahead of the official 2020 count.
Dennis said the city calculated Purdue’s recent rapid growth – including record enrollments for five consecutive years – and new housing in the city and came up with a range between 55,000 and 60,000.
The official number for West Lafayette: 44,595.
“We suspect that since the count takes place in late spring and summer that very few student, off-campus residents were counted,” Dennis said. “The pandemic exacerbated that with people we’d typically have in town but they were home.”
Here’s what’s next, via the AP:
“Cities, states and tribal nations can start contesting their numbers in January through the bureau's Count Question Resolution program, but it looks only at number-crunching errors, such as an overlooked housing unit or incorrect boundaries.”
For West Lafayette, that could huge.
“As in the Hindenburg,” Dennis said.
In this case: Oh, the lack of humanity …
COURTHOUSE RULES AND THE NATIVITY, THE NEVER-ENDING STORY: Mary Pat Hall returned to the Tippecanoe County commissioners Monday morning, making what has been a nearly annual plea. The Tippecanoe County resident asked commissioners to reconsider a policy that limits how long displays may stay on county courthouse grounds, in hopes that a Nativity scene could go up – and stay up – there for the Christmas season.
Upshot from the commissioners: We’ll keep the courthouse display policy we have.
From Hall’s standpoint, she thanked commissioners for allowing the symbol of Christ’s birth on the courthouse grounds for the past four years – after nearly two decades with a county policy that prohibited most displays on the county’s part of the courthouse square in downtown Lafayette. Hall’s complaint Monday: Jack Ruckel – who for years parked a truck with a manger scene in the pickup bed along the curb outside the courthouse – had to set up the creche and tear it back down each night stay within the county’s new rules.
Actually should have thanked a marijuana legalization push, rather than commissioners, for clearing the way for the Christmas display.
In 2016, the Indianapolis-based Higher Fellowship, with support from the ACLU of Indiana, sued the county in federal court after commissioners declined the group use of the courthouse. Higher Fellowship, in come confusion about whether it had been given permission to hold a rally a few months earlier, had caused a stir with noise complaints from judges and others working in the courthouse during a weekday event.
Commissioners argued that a “closed forum” policy, instituted in 1999, was meant to keep people from believing speech and displays at the courthouse would be heard and seen as the county’s view. A federal judge didn’t buy that argument, ruling the county couldn’t pick and choose what could use the courthouse as a backdrop.
The result was a new policy that limited events to 8 a.m.-8 p.m. on weekends, noon-1 p.m. weekdays, and 5-8 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays – with Tuesdays excluded because of evening court sessions that day. The policy asks that organizers get permission from the county at least 72 hours in advance. Organizers also must stay with displays at those times.
That allowed the Nativity – the subject of yearly debates for a while – back at the courthouse. But it didn’t allow for the display up for days at a time.
Hall, with echoes of her requests dating to the ‘90s, argued that the United States was a Christian nation and that the Nativity on public ground should be part of that. Commissioners just pointed to the policy.
“Obviously, you walk a fine line these days,” Commissioner Tom Murtaugh said. “And that policy has held up very well. I think it would be a mistake to vary from it.”
WHAT IS … HOMETOWN FINAL JEOPARDY? Monday night’s Final Jeopardy category was “Names on the Map.” And your clue was:
Two contestants wrote “Gary.” One got it correct: Marquis de Lafayette. (Says so right on the courthouse square in downtown.)
We also would have accepted “Santa Claus.”
Of course, if you make the show, you know Final Jeopardy is going to be Geology or 16th Century Composers …
PURDUE VAX RATES: Purdue President Mitch Daniels fended off a question from a faculty member Monday, saying the university had no plans to up the pandemic ante and call for a vaccine mandate. Daniels told the University Senate on Monday that he believed Purdue’s method – requiring that staff, faculty and students either prove they have a COVID-19 vaccination or have them submit to ongoing COVID-19 testing during the semester – was working as well as any school where vaccine mandates don’t come with means of proof or alternative testing to back it up. “We’re in pursuit of results,” Daniels said. “Our results, we feel, have been pretty good. … We see no reason to depart from that now.” The West Lafayette campus has an 87% overall rate, with 48,021 students, staff and faculty fully vaccinated, according to numbers Daniels showed Monday. Of those, the vaccination rates broke down this way: 97% of faculty, 86% of staff and 87% of students.
ONE SHOT SHORT OF A REAL ON-FIELD BOILERMAKER … : I was listening to Tim Newton on the Purdue football broadcast when the beer cans came flying from the stands at Kinnick Stadium during the Boilers’ upset win over No. 2 Iowa. But Des Moines Register photographer Bryon Houlgrave caught the scene when offensive lineman Greg Long took over. Tell me photojournalism doesn’t matter.
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But, which Lafayette city was first named after Lafayette?