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It was a small sticker, a black-and-white image of an American flag with a single stripe, colored blue.
One Tuesday evening in February, it was on display in the top right corner of the window for Salt Lake Community College’s South City security office. By Wednesday morning, the sticker was gone.
The flag image, usually called the Thin Blue Line flag, is seen by some as a symbol of solidarity with law enforcement — and by others, particularly African Americans, a divisive icon.
The image rose to cultural prominence in response to protests against police brutality in 2014 — reinforcing “an uncomfortable view of law enforcement” held by many in the Black community because of America’s history of police violence against people of color, said Glory Johnson-Stanton, SLCC’s manager of multicultural initiatives.
The symbol became even more associated with a racial divide when it was adopted by far-right groups, and waved at white-supremacist events, like the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.
“I don’t think [a Black student] would feel comfortable going into that office or being around any of the officers here,” Johnson-Stanton said.
Shane Crabtree, SLCC’s executive director of public safety, said he did not know about the sticker’s presence. He added that he feels the flag symbol’s original intent was to honor law enforcement, but acknowledged that not everyone agrees.
“Some people can view it as a symbol that represents law enforcement vs. them,” Crabtree said, adding that he would not authorize the symbol in any of SLCC’s safety offices.
In 2014, Andrew Jacob, a white college student at the University of Michigan, had the idea of putting a blue line on an American flag symbol — as a show of support of law enforcement as protests against police brutality swept the country. (The phrase “thin blue line” — describing police as the only force separating law-abiding citizens from criminals — goes back to the early 1900s.)
Jacob now is president of Thin Blue Line USA, an online retailer that sells merchandise emblazoned with the black-and-white flag with the blue stripe: Christmas ornaments, face masks, t-shirts and, yes, stickers.
Jacob’s company insists the symbol is apolitical. When the U.S. Capitol insurrectionists brandished the symbol on Jan. 6, 2021, the company swiftly issued a statement denouncing the attack.
“The Thin Blue Line Flag stands for the sacrifice law enforcement officers of this nation make each day,” the post read. “We reject in the strongest possible terms any association of the flag with racism, hatred, bigotry, and violence. To use it in such a way tarnishes everything it and our nation stands for.”
Kent Oggart, the South City campus’s safety supervisor (who is not a member of law enforcement), said the symbol represents unity — but “people can view any symbol however they want to.”
Johnson-Stanton argued that it is difficult to believe officers at SLCC are not aware of how many people – African Americans, in particular — have a different view of what the flag represents.
“Whoever put it up, I believe that they had to know what it meant,” she said.
Johnson-Stanton said the symbol was a direct reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement — and a response to how that movement was misrepresented.
“The more we talked about our lives mattering, the more it made other people angry,” she said. She added that Black Lives Matter “is not about police officers and other people … not mattering,” but an attempt to shine a light on the violence Black men and women were suffering at the hands of law enforcement.
Rae Duckworth, the interim director of Black Lives Matter’s Utah chapter, was more blunt: “That’s an ugly, terrible, divisive symbol” that was “only created to overshadow the Black Lives Matter movement.”
In Duckworth’s view, exhibiting the flag symbol at an institution that fosters diversity in education feels like a betrayal.
“The fact that was being showcased is scary,” she said. “I feel fear for those students.”
SLCC did not have “any official awareness” of the Thin Blue Line flag sticker being displayed on the South City campus, said Kathie Campbell, the school’s interim dean of students and assistant vice principal. While displaying it falls under officers’ First Amendment rights, she said the sticker “would probably not have been up if [school officials] had known it was up.”
Campbell said she recognizes that SLCC is “a microcosm of our surrounding community” and must contend with the various prejudices found in the culture. In the last year or so, the school has dealt with the discovery of the letters ‘KKK’ written on a school whiteboard and the racist interruptions of virtual school events.
Sgt. Cameron Roden, public information officer for the Utah Highway Patrol — the agency that handles police services at SLCC’s South City, Taylorsville and Jordan campuses — said the Thin Blue Line flag is not prohibited within the agency, “but it’s not a symbol that’s particularly endorsed.”
(The flag sticker appeared near the UHP’s beehive logo on the window at the South City safety office.)
At SLCC, troopers have met with student groups, Roden said, to “open up avenues of conversation [and] make inroads so that everybody feels like they can come to law enforcement there at the college.”
Peter Moosman, coordinator at SLCC’s Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center, confirmed the school’s safety office has made efforts recently to mend its relationship with “communities that have a historical mistrust or a negative history with law enforcement.” He said the presence of that symbol would make students already uncomfortable reaching out to campus law enforcement would be even less inclined to do so.
Deidre Tyler, a sociology professor at SLCC, said one’s interpretation of the Thin Blue Flag “depends on who you are and your experiences.”
Tyler, who is Black, worked alongside law enforcement in the 1980s as a social worker in Mississippi, and found the experience largely positive. But times and attitudes change, and Tyler said she would find it hard to put herself in the mindset of a college student today.
“What one thing means to [a 62-year-old] can mean something totally different to a 19-year-old,” she said. “We’re so different in how we perceive things.”
And those differences — informed by age, experience or identity — contribute to a culture that is increasingly divided, she said.
“Will it change?” Tyler asked. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Will Stamp 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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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. Will Stamp wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
A coach in a white bucket hat paced along the sideline of a youth football game, casually tossing a ball into the air.
The ball rose above the field, where two lines of young football players stood solemnly, their white uniforms and pink socks making them almost indistinguishable from one another. A small speaker blasted upbeat music, but the players didn’t move as the coach walked past them, giving instructions, still tossing the ball up and letting it fall gently into her hands.
It was five minutes to kickoff. The result of the game would determine whether the Herriman Mustangs, a team of 10- and 11-year-olds, would advance in the playoffs.
The Mustangs’ coach, Ally Cleveland, shuttled her players on and off the field, yelling instructions and affirmations to the dozens of boys and one girl on her team.
At halftime, the Mustangs and their opponents from Cedar Valley were tied, 12-12.
Cleveland’s team gathered around her. Her encouragement was effusive.
“Those were some beautiful blocks!”
“I know you can do it because I’ve seen you do it!”
“It’s a beautiful day to throw the ball, so let’s do it!”
Cleveland is completely immersed in football. Along with coaching, she plays for the Utah Falconz, a team that went undefeated in the Pacific Division of the Women’s National Football Conference in 2023 — her first year with a team that has won seven conference championships and two national titles since 2015.
At 61 years old, she is by far the oldest player on the Falconz roster — playing with athletes who are bigger, stronger and decades younger than she is.
But she’s not ready to let go. Not yet. It wasn’t an easy road to get here, after all.
She wants to savor it.
And she wants to share it.
Growing up as a boy in a small town in Michigan, Cleveland started playing football at age 7. Football was important to the community. It was the thing people did. It was the thing Cleveland’s father did. So, it was the thing Cleveland did.
Cleveland loved everything about the game: The contact, the physicality, the strategy and the complexity.
The coaches were harsh. They made the players run hills. They called the players demeaning names. They told the athletes that they need to work harder. Once, a coach kicked Cleveland in the rear during a running drill.
“We were fearful of skipping a practice and making a mistake,” said Dave Kadau, who was Cleveland’s teammate in high school.
The lesson: Only perfection is acceptable.
That high school team was very good. It only lost two games in four years. One of those losses came during Kadau and Cleveland’s senior year. It was the state quarterfinal. Their coach was so bitter about the loss, he didn’t speak to the players for the rest of the year, Kadau recalled.
The lesson: Winning is more important than relationships.
It was that same high school coach who discouraged Cleveland from trying out for a college team.
You’re not good enough, he said.
“I could have been, for a small school,” Cleveland said. “I could have contributed.”
The lesson: Not everyone gets to contribute.
It would be decades before Cleveland rekindled her relationship with the game. She started coaching when she was in her 30s, and began playing again on a local team around the same time. In her 40s, after her transition, Cleveland found her way onto a few of the competitive teams in the loosely knit leagues that have come and gone in the past few decades as women have sought a place on the gridiron.
Her first adult football coach was also a freeform dance instructor. He was completely opposite in every way from her coaches as a kid. She played 17 seasons with several teams since then, picking up new lessons along the way.
In 2018, most of the nation’s top women’s teams coalesced to form the WNFC. In 2022, she was a utility player for the Los Angeles Legends, registering 14 tackles-for-loss, three sacks, and even a punt return for seven yards.
But she was still trying to feel like she belonged. And she was running out of time. The level of play in the WNFC has risen dramatically since its founding just five years ago, and Cleveland knew she was not as fast or as strong as she used to be. What edge she retained, she figured, came from her knowledge of the game — her decades of experience, even if it was once punctuated by a long spell away from the gridiron.
Cleveland stood in the doorway of classroom number 34 at Hillsdale Elementary in West Valley City, where she has taught 6th grade for the past two school years.
A small poster was taped to the top of the door: “Play like a champion today,” it read. Cleveland reached up and tapped it before stepping into the brightly lit room. A painted cardboard sign that says “Clevelandia” sat atop the whiteboard, welcoming visitors.
It was the Falconz’ offseason, and when Cleveland was not working on strength and flexibility in the gym, or coaching her youth tackle team, she was teaching elementary school kids at Hillsdale.
People say the three R’s of education are “reading,” “writing,” and “arithmetic.” Cleveland said they really are “relationships,” “relationships,” and “relationships.”
“You’ve got to fill up a kid’s tank before you can give them criticism,” she said.
At Hillsdale, 84% of the students are members of racial minorities, according to the Granite School District. Across that district, more than 50% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch — a common marker of economic need. At Hillsdale, it’s closer to 80%.
“We’re classified as a ‘turn-around’ school,” Cleveland said. As in, the school was going in a bad direction a few years ago and a new principal was sent in to turn it around.
“There’s a lot of love that has to go out because everybody doesn’t get enough of it,” she said.
And things are looking up at Hillsdale. Cleveland said a survey done in the school showed a 21% positive increase in students’ relationships with teachers.
She attributes the attitude change to the kids applying the process of “the learning pit.” A small poster on her classroom wall illustrates this. Once someone falls in the pit and is stuck, they ask for help and collaborate with others to get out. After they receive the help they need, they reach a higher level than they were before.
“We can’t do it alone. That’s really the heart of it for me,” she said.
Before Cleveland even moved to Utah, the culture of the Falconz drew her in. Whenever she interacted with players from the Falconz at games, she said, she noticed a difference in the team’s culture.
She’s in Utah for that reason.
“We’re a team. We do everything together,” Cleveland said. “We’re not there for the show. You know we’re not going to do a big fancy dance in the end zone for a touchdown. We’re going to hand the ball over to the ref and go back to the next play.”
Tara Faatili, Cleveland’s teammate on the Falconz, agreed.
“We just play the sport and go home. We don’t have a big head about our positions,” she said.
Faatili said the Falconz are professional and family-oriented.
“We have a thing called the Falconz way,” she said. “We’re like a big family. Everybody looks out for each other.”
Cleveland added to that atmosphere in her first year.
“She was all for it,” Faatili said. Cleveland was immediately invested in the Falconz, using her knowledge and passion for football to help the team learn and understand the game better, all while sharing her positivity and energy with the team.
“She’s just a happy-go-lucky girl,” Faatili added.
The Falconz — with Cleveland back on the field — are scheduled to start their 2024 season on the road, against the Seattle Majestics, on April 6. Their first home game is set for April 13, against the San Diego Rebellion, at Highland High School.
It was fourth down with nine seconds left on the game clock and the score was still 12-12. The Herriman Mustangs were on defense, and Cedar Valley was two yards from the end zone.
Cedar Valley passed the ball to their best player and he ran it in for a touchdown.
It was a tough loss, but Cleveland’s positivity didn’t fade. She congratulated her kids on a hard-fought end to a great season.
Parent Allie Gerona’s son wears number 7. He has autism and struggles with anxiety. But Gerona said her boy has become a completely new person since the beginning of the season. He had very little self-confidence in the beginning. Now he’s a team captain.
Gerona said Cleveland helped build that confidence in her son.
“She’s priceless to me,” Gerona said.
Cleveland is fond of noting that a teaching job is a coaching job. It goes the other way, too.
So, each morning before class, her students repeat an affirmation: “Today is a new day full of new opportunities to make the world a better place for myself, my family and my community.”
And she believes that’s the same spirit that belongs on the football field.
“More love,” Cleveland said, “is almost always the answer.”
Reagan Thomas wrote this story as a journalism student at Utah State University. It is published as part of an ongoing 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. Reagan Thomas wrote this story as a journalism student at Utah State University. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began two years ago, powwow season has emerged in the Mountain West.
Brigham Young University, Weber State University, Utah Valley University and the University of Utah began hosting competitive and social powwows earlier this spring. This week, the American Indian Student Leadership club at Salt Lake Community College will host its annual social powwow on the Taylorsville-Redwood Campus.
The 2022 SLCC Spring Social Powwow — a gathering to honor Indigenous culture through drumming, dancing and socializing — is set for Saturday, April 16, from noon to 10 p.m. (with a dinner break from 5 to 7 p.m.), and is free to the public.
According to Rocklyn Merrick, a student and the event’s coordinator, it marks a return to normalcy for many Native and Indigenous people living in the Salt Lake area.
“My spirit feels full,” said Merrick, who is affiliated with the Diné, Oglala Lakota and Omaha Nations. “I feel whole again.”
Doors open at the Lifetime Activities Center at noon for the inter-tribal powwow, which will feature drummers, dancers, indigenous vendors, a frybread stand and a gathering of tribal members from across the Salt Lake Valley, Utah and neighboring states.
Though the event is free, members of the AISL club encourage attendees to donate non-perishable food items to benefit the Adopt-a-Native-Elder program, which delivers groceries, medical supplies, firewood and other goods to elders living on the Navajo reservation.
The nearly two-year pause on cultural events, including many Native powwows and rituals, created a void for many Indigenous community members who felt disconnected from each other and their traditions.
“I look forward to seeing people again that I have not seen, and in the powwow culture I miss the drumming, singing and the dancing,” said Jeanie Sekaquaptewa Groves, who is affiliated with the Hopi Nation of Hotevilla, Ariz.
Virtual gatherings were fine as a fill-in, Groves said, but powwows are meant to be experienced in person.
“When you are there, you feel everything, you feel the drum,” said Groves, an Indian education coordinator with Utah public schools.
For most Native American and Alaska Native tribes, Groves said, the drum represents the heartbeat and peoples’ connection to the earth.
“As an Indigenous woman and mother, the responsibility we feel is the need to connect to our Mother Earth to protect and to teach respect and honor her,” Groves said. “As mothers, it is our job to teach our children to do the same.”
In most Native American communities, the elders are the keepers of tribal history, traditional stories and cultural practices. A tribe’s knowledge and wisdom – language, agricultural and hunting practices, creation stories and ceremonial traditions – is passed down from generation to generation through oral traditions.
“We lost so many of our elders [to COVID-19], and we miss them,” Groves said, “but we also lost the knowledge.”
Merrick, a pre-med major at SLCC and co-coordinator of the spring powwow, also volunteers with the AISL club. His intent is to help inspire Native youth to connect with both their culture and academics.
“My hope is to touch other Native kids’ hearts and to let them know that we are here,” she said. “There is a Native community at SLCC, and we are here to help them in their academic career.”
Merrick recalled that when she was a child, she attended the 2005 SLCC powwow — and was fascinated to see other Native people in an academic setting different from the boarding school she attended in Montezuma Creek, Utah. After attending the SLCC powwow, Merrick said, she knew she wanted to someday attend college.
“Being a first-generation college student, I didn’t have someone to look up to, and I didn’t want our traumas that come with being an Indigenous person to bring me down,” she said. “I wanted to prove I could do it, and that’s what drives me to put on this powwow.”
Attending powwows, Merrick said, offers a way to build connections between Natives and non-natives. Powwows were among the Native American spiritual and religious practices that once were federally outlawed, and finally made legal in 1978, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“Powwow is a time of social gathering [and] is fun and meant to be experienced,” Merrick said. “A lot of non-Natives ask me, ‘Am I allowed to go?’ Yes! Come feel the spirit of Indigenous culture and why … we fought so hard to have powwows.”
She emphasized that powwows, while social events, also honor Indigenous culture and encouraged non-Natives to attend in reverence. Merrick’s student club, AISL, posted a notice of powwow etiquette on their website, which features guidance for showing respect to Native performers and powwow traditions.
Valene Peratrovich 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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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. Valene Peratrovich wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
With daily advances in artificial intelligence technology advances, scientists and researchers have been looking into the risks and benefits A.I. would carry in the 2024 election.
While some fear that bad actors will use A.I. to misinform the public or affect security, one University of Utah professor is making the argument that A.I. can be viewed as a tool rather than a risk.
Mike Kirby, a professor in the U.’s Kahlert School of Computing, is a leadership member of the university’s Responsible AI Initiative (RAI), which is meeting with community members — including state leaders, lawyers and psychologists — to collect data about how to use AI most effectively.
The initiative, backed with a $100 million investment from the university announced in November, aims to use advanced A.I. technology responsibly, to tackle societal issues including the environment, education and health care.
Elections aren’t now in the initiative’s field of interest, but Kirby says they could be.
The media, Kirby said, portrays A.I. as either a utopian supertool or a dystopian mechanism that will bring the world’s end. RAI, he said, lies somewhere in the middle of those polarized extremes.
“We don’t take a dystopia or a utopian view,” he said. " We try to take a measured view, a healthy optimistically measured view.” Kirby clarified, however, that “healthy” optimism isn’t the same as “blind optimism.”
RAI, he said, looks for the positives of A.I. and determines how to use the technology as a tool — while understanding that A.I.’s potential use will come with challenges.
In applying the initiative’s research to the U.S. electoral system, he said the technology could be used to harm election results — but also to counteract those harms.
For example, he said, some forms of A.I. can detect voting anomalies, by “sifting through data at rates that [humans] can’t, and look for patterns that are anomalous and should be investigated.”
AI isn’t “bad,” Kirby said, and A.I. shouldn’t be treated “as if somehow its the entity that has a choice.” Many of the evils attributed to A.I. — such as “deepfakes” and spreading disinformation to voters — are, he said, the fault of “bad actors with bad intentions.”
The practice of using A.I. for disinformation is, he said, “encouraging a vigilance on the part of us as consumers — just understanding the fact that [we] need to be mindful of this.”
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has published guidelines on how to spot fake news, boiled down to a handy infographic. The guidelines include considering the source of the information, checking the sources provided and the date of publication, and factoring in the news consumer’s own biases.
Josh McCrain, assistant professor of political science at the U., said A.I. is not a concern when it comes to election security. Election infrastructure is “extremely secure,” he said, and those casting doubts on its integrity often are people with “bad intentions and bad faith” when a vote goes against their preferred candidate.
“These are really secure elections,” he said, “and anybody suggesting otherwise has political motivations.”
Deepfakes — A.I.-assisted video or audio that make it appear that someone said or did something they didn’t — are a main concern, McCrain said. Deepfakes have been around for years, he noted, but they are expected to become more prominent as the technology advances.
“That is definitely something that can be exploited by bad actors,” McCrain said.
In January, NBC News reported, a robocall with a simulated voice resembling President Joe Biden’s went out to Democrats in New Hampshire, urging them not to vote in that state’s presidential primary that month. The attorney general’s office in New Hampshire issued a statement that said “this message appears to be artificially generated.”
There have been moves by some states to regulate deepfakes. For example, according to an Associated Press report from January, six states have criminalized nonconsensual deepfake porn.
Otherwise, though, McCrain said it’s up to social media platforms to regulate themselves.
Solving the issue of deepfakes and disinformation is not as easy as recognizing anomalies of bad actor interference, Kirby said. There’s also the concern that regulating A.I. too tightly will remove factual information, he said.
It’s a challenge to keep the right balance, he said, but “this is the amazing thing about our liberal democracies.
“What we don’t want,” Kirby said, “is the mechanisms that we create to try to squash disinformation to be those mechanisms that squash the voice of freedom that’s needed.”
Libbey Hanson wrote this story as a student at the University of Utah. 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. Libbey Hanson wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
