Amplify Utah supports and facilitates dynamic journalistic storytelling to celebrate diverse points of view. By partnering with traditional media, we cultivate an environment that encourages stories be shared widely and made easily accessible for our communities to read, hear, watch and engage.
Sandy’s new female speaking club strives to amplify women’s voices
07-06-2025 By Savannah Stacey
These women have entered their public speaking era.
80 Years Later: Student Documentary Revisits Utah's Topaz Camp
05-11-2025 By Jordan Thornblad
"It [is] so important to Utah history that we don’t brush this under the rug."
'Don't Let It Happen Again': Topaz Survivors Warn of Detention Powers
05-11-2025 By Marissa Bond
“When you forget your history, you repeat it,” says a 94-year-old Japanese American in the University of Utah student-made documentary.
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Under heavy sun, Salt Lake Community College students took to the Taylorsville Redwood campus for Trans Sports Ball Day, one of many events that commemorated the college’s pride month in June.
The June 26 event was a response to the political climate surrounding transgender participation in sports, said Peter Moosman, coordinator for the college’s Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center (GSSRC). Last year, Utah lawmakers voted to prohibit transgender athletes from competing in girls’ high school sports, but a judge temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the ban.
“Trans folks are being denied access to play sports. We wanted to do a response to that,” Moosman said, adding that the event was aimed at providing a space “where they can show up in full authenticity … to be intentional about creating space for people who feel marginalized and left out.”
The event started outside with bag toss, Frisbee, soccer and spike ball. As the heat increased, the activities were moved indoors, where participants played basketball and pickleball.
Charlie Erickson, a student specialist for the GSSRC who is majoring in social work, said he was “absolutely excited” about the event.
“There is a certain amount of queerphobia that comes with sports,” Erickson said. At the event, he added, “people can come out and play sports and not worry. I think it’s fun to be able to get out and do athletic things, regardless of your ability level. We’re judge-free, so we welcome anyone regardless of their sporting abilities.”
Cory Smith, a health sciences major, joined for the camaraderie. She also brought her little brother.
“I wanted to feel a sense of community, find people who are like me and understand my struggle, and be involved in my school,” Smith said. “It’s nice to have activities with SLCC outside of the regular sports activities.”
The issue of transgender inclusivity in sports, Erickson said, is “a big red herring. I think trans people perform at the same level as their peers after the waiting period.”
A 2020 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that more than 12 months of testosterone suppression “may be needed” to ensure transgender women do not have an unfair competitive advantage.
Speaking to the BBC podcast “The Sports Desk” last year, Loughborough University sports scientist Joanna Harper, a trans woman, said “the question isn’t, ‘Do trans women have advantages?’ but instead, ‘Can trans women and [cis] women compete against one another in meaningful competition?’”
Harper added, “Truthfully, the answer isn’t definitive.”
For Erickson, SLCC’s Trans Sports Ball Day was a chance for the college’s queer community to be themselves. “This is the kind of space where we don’t care if you’re an oddball or a star player – you’re invited,” they said.
Teresa Chaikowsky 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. Teresa Chaikowsky wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
After months of work and a delay by the pandemic, Agustin Bautista-Silva presented his mural to a small gathering of students and staff at Salt Lake Community College in April.
“The mural you will see today is a representation of all the times our parents, grandparents, and ancestors wanted us to fly,” Bautista said during the unveiling at the Taylorsville campus. “We all have a similar story.”
Two students pulled back the curtains, revealing a colorful scene depicting a monarch butterfly’s migration from the hands of an individual.
The mural, commissioned by the school’s Latinx Heritage Committee, is emblematic of the journey to the United States that is familiar to many Latinx individuals – either from personal experiences or ancestral stories. The piece, Bautista said, is meant to represent its community on the walls of SLCC.
In 2005, when Bautista was 10 years old, his mother brought him and his younger brother from their home state of Guerrero, Mexico, to Salt Lake City’s Rose Park neighborhood. College was not in his initial plans.
“I always wanted to join the military,” Bautista said.
He submitted two letters of application while he was still in high school. Despite being a DACA recipient, he said he was rejected because he is not a permanent resident.
“At this point, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Bautista said. “I had never put any thought into college or studying for a degree.”
Around the same time, during his senior year of high school, an engineering class and a supportive teacher fueled Bautista’s interest in robotics. The teacher encouraged Bautista to apply for college and paid his application fee.
A few months later, Bautista started classes at SLCC.
“I started meeting more people that looked like me and shared my goals,” Bautista said. “I became more attached to the school.”
The connections he made with the Latinx community at SLCC, he said, helped him to stay focused, especially after returning to college following a year-long break, which he took to work fulltime to pay for tuition.
Bautista, who graduated from SLCC in 2018 and received his bachelor’s from Weber State University in electronics and engineering in April, works for the college in the Orientation and Student Success office. When he saw an announcement from the school’s Latinx Heritage Committee seeking submissions for a new campus mural last year, Bautista figured it was a good opportunity to tap into his sketching hobby.
As of 2020, Hispanic students account for nearly 20% of the school’s student body, according to the SLCC Fact Book. Sendys Estevez, chair of the Latinx Heritage Committee, said the art piece was proposed to reaffirm the experiences of Latinx students on campus through art.
“We wanted to share our story in the college,” Estevez said.
Orientation and Student Success Director Richard Diaz agreed, noting one of the school’s seven values focuses on inclusivity.
“When you walk into the college, you look for something that makes you say, ‘This is a place where I belong’,” he said. “Our community is very diverse, and so we have to be representative of that diversity not just in our student body but also in our spaces.”
Of the many submissions, Bautista’s topical element of migration represented by the butterfly’s journey resonated with the committee.
“The topic of migration hits a lot of us,” Bautista said. “When you talk to more people, you realize we all share a similar perspective.”
For Brenda Santoyo, who works with undocumented students at SLCC’s Dream Center, the mural offers an invitation of inclusion to Latinx students.
“If someone feels like they belong and feels connected to the campus, they’re more likely to persist,” Santoyo explained.
According to the Utah System for Higher Education, 551 undocumented students attend SLCC as of 2020. This is more than double the next closest institution, Utah Valley University, with 244 undocumented students. These figures reflect students who qualify for in-state tuition.
Santoyo emphasized that aside from the mural, initiatives from the Dream Center and the Orientation and Student Success office are available to help Latinx students. For example, the Dream Center hosted its first annual UndocuWeek in April. The week-long event included workshops centered around the lived experiences of undocumented students.
The student success office also offers the Bruin Scholars program, which is designed to aid first-generation, undocumented and non-traditional students by connecting them to resources and dedicated staff.
“If you feel you belong somewhere, it’s more likely you’ll continue and strive for something,” Bautista said.
Ultimately, Bautista hopes the mural can help and inspire future Latinx students in similar ways in which he received aid from peers during his time at SLCC.
“Every single person I’ve met along the way, like Richard, the students I’ve interacted with, had a big impact on me,” Bautista said. “You’re doing it not only for yourself but for other people, too.”
For Bautista, the path one creates will be a model for future generations.
“Even though it might not seem like it, every student that graduates is leaving behind a legacy,” he said. “There is always someone out there looking up to you.”
Sex education is required curriculum in Utah high schools, but students say the classroom isn’t where they are learning the most.
The Utah Board of Education requires eighth through 12th grade health programs to “present a strong abstinence message.” That leaves a lot of questions about how sex works, said Salt Lake Community College student Lauren Hamilton, prompting teens and young adults to do their own research on websites like Instagram and Tumblr, Reddit or from secondhand experiences from friends and peers.
Hamilton, a sociology major who also works in the Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center, said she first learned about sex from friends and her first boyfriend.
That “isn’t the way you want to learn about sex,” Hamilton said. “It opened the doors for a lot of unhealthy relationship dynamics and unhealthy views on sex.”
Preston Langlois, an SLCC general education major, said he learned the most about sex on Tumblr and the internet generally.
“The lack of talking about sex really contributes to bad behavior around sex, lack of consent, lack of healthy relationships and a lack of understanding,” he said.
Resource center coordinator Peter Moosman described his middle and high school sexual education in Utah as insufficient.
Alexie Zollinger 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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NOTE TO MEDIA PARTNERS PUBLISHING WORKWe 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. Alexie Zollinger wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
It “was not substantial or comprehensive,” he said. “It was like, ‘don’t have sex.’ That was all we got.”
Moosman now teaches a comprehensive adult sexual education workshop at SLCC annually. The workshop, which college instructors can also set up with Moosman for specific classes, covers contraceptive methods, sexually transmitted disease prevention, consent and sex in relation to gender dysphoria.
Whitney Ockey, health promotion manager at the college’s Center for Health and Counseling, said Utah’s abstinence-based education is focused on keeping teens from having sex.
“[The hope is] that students are just going to listen and are not going to have intercourse, hopefully resulting in lower teen pregnancies, STDs and lower rates of abortion,” she said. “The intention is just to teach ‘don’t do it and you won’t have any problems.’ ”
Abstinence-based education has come under fire in recent years by health educators, citing studies and evidence that shows such curriculums are often ineffective in preventing teen pregnancy and STDs.
“I think you can look at that and say it’s not working,” Ockey said.
The Journal of Adolescent Health, for example, found that abstinence-only education programs defined by federal funding requirements can be, “morally problematic, by withholding information and promoting questionable and inaccurate opinions.”
For Ockey, who is also a certified health education specialist , there is value in promoting abstinence and its benefits, but it isn’t the only way.
“I don’t see a lot of harm in teaching the basics of sex education, such as condom use, what [a sexually transmitted illness] is, and that you could have an STI for months or years and not know,” she said. “Right now, no one tells you that.”
While Utah law limits sex education, Ockey is hopeful that over time the program could become more transparent.
“I think it can change, not immediately, and not without a lot of work,” she said. “But once a new generation is in the government, they will be able to enact change.”
Resources on sexual and reproductive health information can be found on SLCC’s website on the Center for Health and Counseling page, under community resources.
Last fall, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a new version of its youth-focused pamphlet, “For the Strength of Youth,” with revised general principles and values for young members to consider when it comes to sexuality purity, clothing, same-gender attraction, and even tattoos.
“The Lord’s standard is for you to honor the sacredness of your body, even when that means being different from the world,” the updated version of the guide reads. “Let this truth and the Spirit be your guide as you make decisions — especially decisions that have lasting effects on your body.”
Some faithful members, however, like married couple Stockton and Brielle Barney, flaunt heavy ink showcasing their love of Utah, their faith, trials and triumphs. While tattoos may be taboo, they say, ink has never been forbidden.
“It’s never been actual doctrine that tattoos are a big no-no,” Stockton Barney said. “It’s always been a cultural thing.”
Their tattoos have strong and personal meanings, and include images they’re happy explaining to anyone curious to ask. A lot of thought goes into every tattoo, given its permanence, Brielle Barney said.
“It was a decision between me and my Heavenly Father,” she said. “Definitely contemplated it a lot just because growing up, it was such a bad connotation behind tattoos, so I took it very seriously.”
Salt Lake Community College journalism student Kristina Martinez joined the couple and their tattoo artist, Raoul “Grey” Manzano, at The Dark Arts studio in Midvale for her documentary short “Inked: Latter-day Saints, Tattoos and Taboos.”
Kristina Martinez reported, filmed and produced this documentary short 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. Kristina 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.
