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The Logan City School District has updated its policy on symbols in classrooms, after months of debate over the presence of rainbow pride flags in classrooms.
The policy went into effect March 3, after a 3-2 school board vote last December to revise the district’s Standards for Media Use policy to support Utah state code, which says any classroom materials “do not display materials that endorse, promote, or disparage a particular political, personal, religious, denominational, sectarian, agnostic, or atheist belief or viewpoint.”
Under the new district policy, a school’s principal does not have to remove personal items — including pride flags — from a teacher’s desk as long as they “do not disturb the learning process.”
Before the district enforces any changes, Superintendent Frank Schofield and the district’s five other board members plan to offer training to administrators on how to implement the policy in unique situations. The administrators will then train their own staff, according to Shana Longhurst, the district’s director of communications and public relations.
“We know there are going to be a lot of novel situations that are going to come up, just because of the complexity of the issue,” Schofield said.
Frank Stewart, the board’s vice president, said the policy and training will help teachers better know the answers and processes for student and parent concerns.
“We just want every teacher to have and feel like they have the backing of our administration in every circumstance, so that they have answers when a parent comes to address on specifically about their student or their child — that there’s a good process in place to make sure that we consider all the options on ways that we can best help them,” Stewart said.
Board member Larry Williams agreed, saying “we want to minimize putting the teacher on the spot. … And that’s why there’s going to be a building administrator principal involved in determining what’s appropriate.”
Schofield said the board has delayed putting their training together, so they could take any changes by the Legislature into account, specifically relating to neutrality in classrooms.
The policy states: “Materials that do not convey the District’s educational message, or are determined by the building principal to be in violation of the guidance in this policy, may be removed by the school principal. An educator or other employee who uses instructional time or space to convey a political, religious, or personal message after being directed not to may be subject to disciplinary action.”
However, Longhurst explained, the policy “does not require anyone to remove anything from their classroom, unless it violates the policy. Nothing needs to be removed at this point and will not need to be based on the implementation of this policy.”
During a Sept. 13 school board meeting, Andrea Sinfield, a Hillcrest Elementary School parent, kick-started the conversation about classroom symbols when she expressed concern about a pride flag sticker with the words “Safe Space” on the front door of a few kindergarten classroom doors in her daughter’s elementary school.
Sinfield said it feels like nothing has changed over pride flags in classrooms.
“It’s a little disheartening to me, because of all the work that [we] have done to try to create a neutral classroom, because that’s what it is,” Sinfield said.
Jay Bates Domenech, a senior at Logan High School and president of the school’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), agreed that there has been little change since the policy went into effect.
“The only change I’ve really seen is actually an influx of teachers putting up pride flags,” Domenech said.
However, Domenech did say he was concerned that, after the administrator training, their principal may be more strict with implementing the policy than other schools in the district.
The implementation, Domenech said, “is just going to make it a more hostile environment. We already don’t have a super-amazing, supportive school — and that goes for a lot of things, like not only queerness but also, like, people of color and undocumented people, etc. But, like, I just think it’s going to increase the kind of otherness of queer students.”
Sinfield suggested that the Logan City School District could implement a policy similar to the Cache County School District.
She referenced a picture of a flier outside a Green Canyon high school classroom. The flier pictured several students — including a student in a wheelchair, students of color, and another wearing a rainbow shirt — with the words, “Safe, Welcome, Invited. Our school is a safe place where everyone belongs. Come, learn with us.”
Schofield said that there hasn’t been a discussion with the board yet on creating a similar district-wide symbol for inclusion.
“As we have the conversation of ways to communicate inclusion for all students, one of our board’s commitments is to do that in a way that doesn’t inadvertently send a message of exclusion for groups that identify with a particular symbol,” Schofield said. “We haven’t finalized anything, because our board is extremely aware these images have strong emotional impacts on students and their families.”
Stewart said the board and district’s decisions centered on trying to help everyone feel included.
“It really is our hope that we can continue to do everything we can to help students feel accepted in every capacity,” Stewart said.
Jenny Carpenter wrote this story as a journalism student at Utah State University. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Jenny Carpenterwrote this story as a journalism student at Utah State University. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
In the home of Darren Parry on a Sunday afternoon, five Salt Lake Community College students circle the former Northwestern Shoshone Nation chairman for a conversation about the crisis facing the Great Salt Lake.
Parry’s gaze, meanwhile, remains fixed on the camera in front of him. Visible over his shoulder, in the frame of the camera, are three framed photographs of his ancestral family. They were Shoshone people, remnants of the 1863 Bear River Massacre, who were later baptized by Latter-day Saints in the same river.
For Parry, his ancestral history serves as an example of how westward colonizers pushed Indigenous people from their homes. When Utah eventually sprung into statehood, Parry pointed out that Indigenous people “were not given a seat at the table,” here in the state or anywhere else.
The latter point is what informs Parry’s views on current efforts intended to help the dwindling Great Salt Lake, and it’s why the crew of students visited his home for an interview. “We’ve scienced this [Great Salt Lake] problem to death,” said Parry, who goes on to add, “We have to start looking at the problem from a … different view. Why not maybe an Indigenous view?”
This conversation with Parry was one of several interviews that the student group conducted for a new documentary covering the lake. They decided that the film should focus on “Indigenous stewardship,” a term that refers to the notion of Native people being at the helm of environmental decision-making.
Titled “Diverted: Indigenous Stewardship and Saving the Great Salt Lake,” the 30-minute documentary is set to premiere Friday, Dec. 8, at Salt Lake Community College’s South City campus. Its premiere comes after months of work, which was carried out by the student group for a course at the college.
Those involved in the project – seven students in total – said they wanted to tackle an urgent subject matter.
27-year-old student McCaulee Blackburn, co-producer of the film, recalls first learning about the climate crisis at age 11 and subsequently wondering what lay in store for the planet.
Like perhaps many young people today, Blackburn said growing up and moving through life was accompanied by “constant climate anxiety” over their future – a future they felt had been stolen from new generations. So, when a SLCC film student pitched the idea of a documentary tackling Great Salt Lake to Blackburn in January, hopping on board seemed like a no-brainer.
At the time, Blackburn had just finished an internship with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a group of media and education organizations that joined forces in 2022 with the goal of informing the public about the lake and its declining water levels.
During their internship, Blackburn spoke with water experts and wrote articles communicating ways to help the lake. However, they noticed that solution talks almost always tended to omit Indigenous perspectives.
“I knew that if I was going to work on a project about the lake, I wanted to make sure Indigenous people were being centered,” Blackburn said.
Of particular interest to Blackburn was the notion of Indigenous stewardship. They aimed to explore the science of the lake as well as how a different set of hands – those with a link to the land – would manage Utah’s water resources in contrast to the state legislature.
Blackburn initially recruited two fellow SLCC students to work on the project. One of them was friend and SLCC film student Valene Peratrovich, who is also an alternating host of KRCL radio’s Sunday morning program, “Living the Circle of Life,” a show dedicated to the Indigenous people of Utah.
Born in Alaska with ancestry from three separate tribes, Peratrovich said she has experienced firsthand the connection that Indigenous people have with nature and the earth. Blackburn’s sentiments were much the same: “Impassioned,” Peratrovich said.
“As an Indigenous woman, it was crazy and relieving to know other people care; that I don’t have to be the only one … trying to push things forward,” Peratrovich said. “Someone sees me, and I see them.”
The three-student group began producing their documentary outside of a class or work setting, relying solely on personal equipment. Then, in the fall, Peratrovich enrolled in a documentary production course at SLCC and pitched their idea to the class as a potential pursuit for the semester. Much to Peratrovich’s surprise, the class selected her pitch.
Student Kolby Butts, who serves as co-director of the project, had also pitched coverage of the lake separately from Peratrovich. Butts said reading about the lake’s lowest recorded point last November prompted him to bring this pitch forward over other ideas he’d been considering.
“Our lives are on the line,” Butts said of his reasoning. “We’re now trying to preserve our spot in the future so we can continue for more generations. But in the current state of the world, we can’t do that.”
Butts hopes the documentary, with its features of expert voices and various images of the lake, can help more people connect with the issue and influences audiences to consider the perspective of Indigenous stewardship.
“The biggest goal of this was to bring this story into a new medium,” Butts said. “We’ve seen dozens upon dozens of articles … Reading stuff like that works, but I don’t think it gets the point across.”
As the student group readies to premiere the 30-minute documentary – which features interviews with Parry, water and climate professors, Carl Moore of PANDOS, and Elizabeth Kronk Warner, dean of the University of Utah school of law – their plan is not to move on but rather to expand what they’ve already created, with hopes of eventually creating a feature-length documentary.
“We’re going to the wisdom keepers, scholars and community members, and bringing them all together to find the commonality,” Peratrovich said.
Watch the trailer for Diverted: Indigenous Stewardship & Saving the Great Salt Lake.
Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
An activist group at Brigham Young University is asking students across Utah to join a national college walkout next week, in an effort to fight homophobia on college campuses.
The Black Menaces — known for asking BYU students challenging questions about racism and equality, then posting the answers on TikTok— has teamed with the Religious Exemption Accountability Project to organize the “Strike Out Homophobia” walkout on Tuesday.
The aim of the walkout, organizers say, is to protest discrimination against the LGBTQ community and other minorities at colleges and universities operated by religious organizations.
“We are walking out to protest the end of legal discrimination by religious universities against queer individuals,” said Sebastian Stewart-Johnson, content coordinator and editor for the Black Menaces, in a TikTok video posted Sept. 6.
Brigham Young University is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, through its Church Educational System — which also oversees Ensign College in Salt Lake City, BYU’s branches in Rexburg, Idaho, and Laie, Hawaii, the online BYU Pathway Worldwide, and a network of seminaries and institutes of religion.
Students on campuses across Utah and the nation are invited to participate, as organizers hope to get more than 100 colleges and universities involved. The walkout begins at noon Mountain Time on Tuesday. That day, Oct. 11, also is National Coming Out Day, the annual celebration of declaring publicly one’s LGBTQ identity.
Event organizers, on their website, say the goal is to bring Title IX protections — which prohibit sex-based discrimination in any school that receives federal funding — to private religious schools, which are largely exempt from the law.
Elisa Stone, a professor of English and queer studies at Salt Lake Community College and an advisor for the college’s queer student association, said she believes the walkout could be effective in prompting change.
“Peaceful protest is always impactful,” she said. “Anything we can do to get the attention of those who are choosing to oppress and let them know that the oppressed are rising up, that’s when things begin to shift.”
Student Resource Center (GSSRC), which works to support SLCC’s LGBTQ students throughout their education. The GSSRC holds activities and support groups and provides resources to women, LGBTQ students and allies.
Nizhoni Tsosie, an English student at SLCC who counts several BYU graduates in her family, said she would be interested in participating in the walkout.
The videos the Black Menaces make for TikTok, which have been going viral for months, paired with planning events like the walkout and participating in protests in Provo “takes guts,” Tsosie said.
“The Black Menaces have become notorious among my family,” she said. “I think they’re doing what all BIPOC students at BYU wish they could’ve done. It’s kind of amazing to see just a handful of students and a microphone make a whole school feel on edge.”
Haily Askerlund wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text:
This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism. Haily Askerlund wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
When he was a high school student, Jevahjire France spoke at the opening of a new community technology lab dedicated to serving South Salt Lake’s youth.
France, who was a member of Cottonwood High School’s robotics team, knows the challenges many students face accessing the latest technology. During that October 2019 event, France expressed appreciation for the tech center’s establishment and praised the larger community center for hosting the lab.
That community center — dating back more than 100 years — hosts many of South Salt Lake’s activities and events. However, France was bothered that the community center is named in honor of Christopher Columbus.
In August 2020, he wrote a letter to South Salt Lake City Council members asking them to consider a name change.
“In all honesty,” France wrote in the letter, “the name of [the community center] was one that I could never find myself in as a youth.”
“As a young immigrant just like many in South Salt Lake, I have always wondered if the members of the council of this city ever question how a young immigrant or refugee feels knowing that he is frequenting a library named after an oppressor not too different from the one(s) they or their parents were fleeing from back home?”
France, now a student at Salt Lake Community College, moved from Haiti to the United States in 2016 when he was 13. As a high school student taking part in the robotics team, France formed a connection with Promise SSL, a city initiative that provides community and after-school programs with an academic focus.
The Best Buy Teen Tech Center, a Promise SSL project, serves a diverse population, France said, noting he believes the name of the community center should reflect that as well.
Following France’s letter, the City Council tasked the Youth City Council, a group comprised of local high school students, to come up with a name change proposal.
Edward Lopez, an adviser to the YCC, said that while France’s letter initiated the current process, other members of the community had previously supported changing the center’s name.
They provided a finished proposal in April 2021 and outlined the reasons for a name change. They have the support of 17 organizations in and around South Salt Lake.
The English Skills Learning Center, a nonprofit that uses the community center to provide English classes to non-native speakers, was among the supportive organizations.
“When we choose the names of buildings, parks and other community spaces, we are making a public statement about the historical figures we honor and value, and in the process, we may be further silencing already marginalized voices,” wrote Katie Donoviel, the learning center’s executive director, in a letter to Mayor Cherie Wood and the City Council.
Other groups that wrote letters of support for a name change include the Utah Refugee Connection, United Way of Salt Lake and Catholic Community Services.
The proposal also lists three potential new names for the center: Amani, the Swahili word for “peace,” bridges and promise. Lopez said these names are only suggestions, but he noted that the YCC supports a “value based” name rather than naming the center after an individual.
“South Salt Lake is one of the most diverse cities in the whole state,” Lopez said. “We have refugees and immigrants here from dozens and dozens of countries.”
According to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, South Salt Lake’s percentage of foreign-born residents is 24.6%.
“The city talks about being an inviting and inclusive space,” Lopez said. “So, we want to show the community that we invite to live here that we do believe that. We believe that the center can be more representative.”
The City Council held its first and, thus far, only discussion of renaming the Columbus Community Center in July. The meeting attracted concerned residents.
“We look at the great things that people did in their past, and that is why we honor them — because they did great things that changed the world,” said resident Austen Gee. “That is why we honor Columbus.”
Fred Conlon, another resident, also wanted the center to keep its name.
“There are those who say that Columbus doesn’t live up to our modern values and morals — that is true,” Conlon said to the council. “But it is also true that without Columbus our modern values might not very well exist, so I am in favor of keeping the name of the Columbus center.”
Eight residents spoke at that meeting, all expressing opposition to a name change. The council members pushed the decision to an unspecified date to get feedback from a “wide representation” of the community.
Lopez said some people do not feel comfortable appearing at council meetings, and that often includes people from underrepresented communities.
“[A council meeting] is an intimidating platform and not accessible to everyone,” Lopez said.
Council member Sharla Bynum noted during the meeting, there is discussion of implementing an app to survey residents, predicting a roll-out in a “month or two.” As of Oct. 25, the council had not yet introduced a survey app.
Wood, the mayor, has in the past supported the efforts of the YCC, but declined to comment prior to a decision on the center’s name change.
Lopez and France encourage residents to reach out to their respective council representatives.
“Your voice, especially as a youth, matters,” Lopez said, “because you are the ones coming up and who will be the decision makers... The youth are the ones who will be leading our community in the future.”
Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
