A new Latter-day Saint temple will land in the far western reaches of the Salt Lake Valley, just north of one of the world’s largest open pit mines.

The recently announced West Jordan Temple will sit on about 16 acres at approximately 7148 West, off of Highway 111, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints revealed in a news release Monday.

The future temple’s nearest neighborhood already hosts Jordan School District’s Sunset Ridge Middle School and Oakcrest Elementary School.

Church President Russell M. Nelson told attendees at this month’s General Conference in Salt Lake City that a new temple is also coming to Lehi.

That temple is slated to be built on a roughly 22.5-acre spread at the intersection of 3950 N. Center St., next to Alpine School District’s Viewpoint Middle School and near a Texas Instruments campus.

Plans for both sites call for a multistory temple of about 85,000 square feet and an accompanying meetinghouse on each property. Both will be their city’s first temples.

West Jordan’s temple will be the fourth on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley, joining two in neighboring South Jordan and a new temple in Taylorsville set to be dedicated June 2. The West Jordan and Lehi temples bring the total number of planned or constructed temples in the faith’s home state to 30.

The announcement of the new temples this month marked the first time since October 2021 that Nelson has revealed plans for new temples in the Beehive State.

After the announcement, public officials in both cities expressed excitement and surprise about their communities being chosen for new temples, saying the edifices will bring better opportunities for their residents to participate in religious life.

Latter-day Saints — although only those who have been deemed worthy — enter temples to participate in the faith’s most sacred rituals, like eternal marriage.

This is a file test.

For the fourth year in a row, public charter Beehive Science and Technology Academy claimed the top spot as Utah’s No. 1 high school, according to U.S. News and World Report’s annual list of high school rankings.

The charter’s first-place finish comes as five traditional high schools made this year’s Top 10 list, an indication that traditional high schools are still shaking off years of charter schools dominating Utah’s rankings.

Last year, four traditional high schools made the Top 10 list. Two of the ones that placed this year are Granite School District schools.

Here are the 2024 rankings:

1. Beehive Science and Technology Academy (charter); Sandy.

2. Skyline High School (Granite School District); Millcreek.

3. Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy (charter); Lindon.

4. Itineris Early College High School (charter); West Jordan.

5. Park City High School (Park City School District); Park City.

6. Corner Canyon High School (Canyons School District); Draper.

7. Northern Utah Academy for Math Engineering and Science (charter); Layton.

8. Academy for Math Engineering and Science (charter); Murray.

9. Olympus High School (Granite School District); Holladay.

10.Farmington High School (Davis School District); Farmington.

This year’s list saw Skyline High School kick out Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy for second place.

Olympus High School also jumped into the Top 10 from spot No. 13 last year. InTech Collegiate High School, which ranked No. 6 last year, fell off the Top 10 list to spot No. 25.

But while there are more traditional high schools included in this year’s Top 10 list, only two made the top five, compared to three last year.

Overall, Utah ranked No. 21 in the nation with 163 schools analyzed. Five of those (3.1%) ranked in the top 5% of schools nationally; 12 schools ranked in the top 10% of schools nationally; and 41 ranked in top 25% of schools nationally.

Across the U.S., 17,660 public high schools were analyzed for this year’s rankings.

The ranking methodology is based on six factors, including college readiness, proficiency rates and graduation rates, according to U.S. News. and World Report.

College readiness is the most heavily weighted factor, making up 30% of a school’s overall score. There are two elements included in that score: “participation rate” and “quality-adjusted participation rate.”

Participation rate is the number of 12th graders in the 2021-2022 academic year who took at least one Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exam, divided by the total number of 12th graders at the school. It’s weighted at 25% toward a school’s college readiness score.

Quality-adjusted participation rate is the number of 12th graders who took and earned a qualifying score on at least one AP or IB exam, divided by the total number of 12th graders at the school. That rate is weighted at 75% toward a school’s college readiness score.

Other factors include: college curriculum breadth (10%); state assessment proficiency (20%) and state assessment performance (20%) (or a measure of total assessment scores compared to what is predicted, based on a school’s demographic characteristics relative to its state); graduation rate (10%); and underserved student performance (10%).

Nationally, Beehive Science and Technology Academy ranked No. 414 this year, dropping from No. 116 in 2023.

Skyline High School, Utah’s highest ranked traditional school, ranked no. 508 nationwide.

Last year’s Top 10 list:

1. Beehive Science and Technology Academy (charter); Sandy - (same rank).

2. Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy (charter); Lindon - (now 3rd).

3. Skyline High School (Granite School District); Millcreek - (now 2nd).

4. Park City High School (Park City School District); Park City - (now 5th).

5. Corner Canyon High School (Canyons School District); Draper - (now 6th).

6. InTech Collegiate High School (charter); North Logan - (now 25th).

7. Northern Utah Academy for Math Engineering and Science (charter); Layton - (same rank).

8. Itineris Early College High School (charter); West Jordan - (now 4th).

9. Farmington High School (Davis School District); Farmington - (now 10th).

10. Academy for Math Engineering and Science (charter); Murray - (now 8th).

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

Eric Hovde, the Republican banking executive challenging Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, may be developing a problem with older voters.

The bank he leads, Utah-based Sunwest, last month was named as a co-defendant in a California lawsuit that accuses a senior living facility partly owned by the bank of elder abuse, negligence and wrongful death.

Hovde’s campaign called the suit meritless and said it was farcical to hold the chair and CEO of a bank responsible for the actions of a business that it seized in a foreclosure in 2021. Whatever its merits, the suit might have been largely irrelevant to Hovde’s political campaign had he himself not boasted recently of having gained expertise in the nursing home industry as a lender to such residences.

In comments this month in which he suggested there had been irregularities in the 2020 election, Hovde drew on that experience to say that residents of nursing homes “have a five-, six-month life expectancy” and that “almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote.” Those remarks were quickly condemned by Democrats in Wisconsin and by former Milwaukee Bucks star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The recent pileup of problems is an inauspicious start to a campaign that Republicans hope will help wrest control of the Senate from Democrats. Hovde is one of four affluent Republicans who are running to unseat Democratic incumbents, in Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Each of those states either leans heavily Republican in the upcoming presidential contest or is rated a tossup, and the loss of any one of those seats could cost Democrats control of the Senate. The deep pockets of candidates like Hovde will ease the GOP’s heavy fundraising burden as the party confronts Democrats’ early financial advantage.

But Hovde’s stumbles point to a difficulty with that self-funding strategy: With business wealth and business experience come business problems.

The wrongful death lawsuit is a case in point.

In 2021, Sunwest Bank seized the property of a 68-bed assisted living facility in Claremont, California, after its owners failed to repay a $6 million loan. The next year, Betty Nottoli, a 94-year-old woman with dementia, moved into the renamed Claremont Hacienda, then owned in part by a newly created subsidiary of Sunwest.

According to a lawsuit filed by her daughter, Patricia Chiuppi, Nottoli had a series of falls that Chiuppi says were caused by neglect. Court documents assert that the staff of the facility failed to install pull cords, pendants, bedrails or a bed alarm even after a fall in March. Then, on the night of April 4, 2022, another fall broke Nottoli’s hip, “which ultimately led to her death on June 19, 2022,” court documents say.

Ben Voelkel, a spokesperson for the Hovde campaign, said in a statement that there was “no basis for this claim.” He added: “The lawsuit fails to identify the circumstances surrounding the incident. It admits that they are unknown.”

Lisa Flint, the lawyer representing Chiuppi, declined to comment at length, saying discovery in the suit was just beginning, with a trial date set for March 25, 2025.

“The documentation from the facility showed bruising, injuries to arms, head, but no real investigation into her falls,” Flint said.

Initially, only Claremont Hacienda and its parent companies were named in the suit, but on March 25, Flint amended the complaint to name one of the place-holder defendants: Hovde’s Sunwest Bank, identified legally as one of the “owners, officers, administrators, managers and/or members” of the elder care facility.

A lawyer for Sunwest, Robert S. McWhorter, said the bank had yet to answer the lawsuit because Flint had yet to serve it the papers. He said the lawsuit was frivolous, that Sunwest should not have been named, and that the complaint does not allege direct involvement by Sunwest.

Voelkel said in a statement: “Sunwest Bank was a member of an LLC that came into ownership of the facility through a foreclosure. A third party unrelated to Sunwest and the LLC managed the facility. The lawsuit is meritless, which may be why the filing attorney has not actually served Sunwest and has stopped communicating with the bank.”

He also accused Flint of being a “Democrat donor,” based on a single $5 donation in 2020 to ActBlue, which consolidates political donations to Democratic candidates.

With a trial set to begin four months after the 2024 election, an elder abuse and wrongful death lawsuit in Southern California might have seemed remote to voters in Wisconsin.

But Hovde has himself drawn attention to his work in the nursing home world. Pressed by a Milwaukee television newscaster this month on his claims of “issues” in the 2020 election, Hovde replied, “Look, I do lending into the nursing home community, or used to.” And it is true: Sunwest has claimed millions of dollars in revenue from its assisted living properties, including Claremont Hacienda.

Hovde went on to cite allegations of voter fraud, appearing to suggest that residents were not in a condition to vote: “The average life expectancy in a nursing home is four to five months. How can you have, you know, the Racine County sheriff finding 100% of the people voting, and by the way, kids of parents, elderly parents who are dying, saying, ‘Who voted for my parent? Who did that?’”

Days later, Hovde pressed a similar point on the Guy Benson political talk show. “If you’re in a nursing home, you only have a five-, six-month life expectancy,” he said. “Almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote, and you had children, adult children, showing up, saying, ‘Who voted for my 85- or 90-year-old father or mother?’”

Wisconsin’s overall turnout was sky-high in 2020, at 72.3%, and audits of the election found no widespread fraud, in nursing homes or elsewhere.

Hovde’s suggestion that “almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote” has attracted considerable attention. In Wisconsin, people 65 or older make up 18% of the state’s population — and thus a significant voting bloc, especially since they have a high propensity to vote.

In recent days, Hovde has tried to clarify his comments. This past week, he reiterated his belief that “a large percentage” of nursing home residents “are not in the mental capacity to” vote. But he added in an interview on Wisconsin radio, “I think elderly should absolutely vote.”

That might not put the matter to rest — especially since Abdul-Jabbar, known in much of the country as a Los Angeles Lakers great but remembered by Wisconsin residents of a certain age as a Bucks star, weighed in.

“What’s troubling here is his desire to take away the rights of people who have spent a lifetime contributing to this country based on a physical attribute: age,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote on his Substack account. He added: “Even if there was some fraud, the goal should be to uncover it, not deny everyone in nursing homes the vote.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune, in collaboration with Salt Lake Community College, to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism.

They meet with alfalfa farmers, lobby lawmakers and talk easily about the impact of the Great Salt Lake on the economy — all while thinking about what they want to do after high school.

They are members of the Youth Coalition for Great Salt Lake — teens from across the Salt Lake Valley who are focused on education, collaboration and legislation regarding the capital city’s namesake body of water, said Liam Mountain LaMalfa, the group’s founder.

“Our greatest accomplishment … is bringing to the forefront the notion that the youth care about Great Salt Lake,” said LaMalfa, 18. “The [lake] is directly tied to our future — our future quality of life in the state.”

A three-pronged approach

The coalition launched last summer, after the First Unitarian Church’s Environmental Ministry – a group of like-minded adults – started talking to the teens about how they might want to get involved in saving the lake. Lisa Mountain, LaMalfa’s mom, was part of that group.

“I very quickly thought that it would be really important to involve youth, west-side residents and youth of color,” she said.

Mountain said the high school group “resoundingly” decided to lobby the Utah Legislature. After taking several field trips to the lake and being featured in a July 2023 PBS Utah episode of “Utah Insight,” LaMalfa decided he wanted the group open to all high school and college-age youth in Utah.

That’s when the group became the Youth Coalition for Great Salt Lake.

The coalition has a three-pronged approach, said Mountain, who acts as an adviser for the group. The teens focus on informing and educating themselves, collaborating with other advocacy groups and lobbying for legislation on Capitol Hill.

She added the group takes initiative, and in less than a year, have toured Bear River Canal Company, participated in vigils at the Capitol and met with such lawmakers as Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Millcreek, and such leaders as Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed.

“They inspire me constantly,” Mountain said. “They are motivated and dedicated and passionate about saving Great Salt Lake and about protecting their future in Utah and in the world.”

‘Dirt and crud’

In early March, at one of their biweekly meetings at First Unitarian Church near the University of Utah’s campus, five of the group’s 15 members shared what the coalition means to them — and why they believe saving the Great Salt Lake is important.

India Elliott, a senior at Granger High School, said she joined the group because she has always been interested in activism and is concerned about the shrinking lake’s future and its long-term environmental impact. She wants, she said, to be able to grow old in her home state.

“I noticed every winter, and even in the summer, when the air quality gets really bad, and I can barely see the mountains,” she said. “I’m literally looking through dirt and crud … and it makes me feel emotionally worse.”

The Great Salt Lake generates around 15 dust events a year, according to reporting by The Salt Lake Tribune. Spring and summer are becoming more unhealthy, and dust from the exposed lakebed could carry arsenic, copper and mercury.

Cloud Garcia-Ruiz, a senior at Salt Lake Center for Science Education, said they’ve always felt a deep connection to the environment, which led them to join the coalition.

“When I heard that the Great Salt Lake was in trouble, I thought, ‘Maybe this is like a chance to finally do something about it,’” Garcia-Ruiz said.

One of their favorite activities was a tree-planting event, they said, because restoring a part of nature that used to be there felt nice. The event last October with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation allowed the teens to work with the tribe’s mission of stewardship of the land and environment, Mountain said.

For Elliott, attending the vigils for the lake – which took place every morning for all 45 days of this year’s legislative session – stood out as a highlight. Community members interested in saving the Great Salt Lake gathered on the steps of the Capitol every day. Members from the youth coalition joined every Tuesday at 8 a.m., along with Nan Seymour, a local poet who has spent the last three legislative sessions holding some sort of vigil for the lake.

“We sing, we dance,” Elliott said. “It’s lighthearted when you’re kind of, like, surrounded in doom and gloom.”

‘A cultural shift’

The Great Salt Lake generates nearly $2 billion for Utah’s economy annually, according to the state’s website. It contributes 5% to 10% to the lake effect snow, creating $1.2 billion for the ski industry.

“We’re looking at a serious economic downturn, which is a scary thought to think about the workforce being impacted by losing billions upon billions of dollars in economic growth — gone,” LaMalfa said.

Part of the coalition’s approach is educating others and informing themselves of the science behind the Great Salt Lake. Soon after the coalition’s founding, the group toured the Bear River Canal Company, which oversees 126 miles of the Bear River, the Great Salt Lake’s largest tributary.

Mountain said they also have met with alfalfa farmers and other stakeholders, such as Commissioner Steed, to get a variety of perspectives on the issue of the lake. Steed discussed with the group what youth could do to help save the lake, which includes a cultural shift, LaMalfa said.

“To really understand his perspective and cement the notion of cultural change is the thing we need,” he said.

Elliott made a slideshow about saving the lake, to educate classmates and friends and to present at events. In it, she argued shifting the culture means changing how people think about using water, and made suggestions such as removing non-functional turf grass, installing water-wise landscaping and metering water use.

Izzy Khachatryan, a junior at Skyline High School, said she knew she wanted to get other youth involved in the issue of the Great Salt Lake.

“Culture drives policy, and we need policy changes in order to get water back to the lake,” Khachatryan said. “In order to do that, we obviously need people to be aware of the issues and be committed to the issues and that starts with advocacy, which is what one of our group’s main focus is.”

Living with the consequences

While Utah lawmakers dubbed 2022 “the year of water,” the 2024 legislative session did not deliver the same vigor around issues related to the lake. The number of bills passed was deemed “average” by experts, who said lawmakers made enough “technical changes” like measuring, tracking and saving water to keep water policy moving in the right direction.

During the session, members of the youth coalition met with lawmakers — including Blouin, a Democrat representing parts of Salt Lake County, from Sugar House to the Jordan River Parkway — to discuss how they could be most impactful. Blouin, who has been working with the group since last summer, said engaging with the teens has been great.

“The legislators are not particularly representative of the population as a whole, definitely from an age perspective,” Blouin said. “Giving younger folks an opportunity to get up there and to feel like their voices are being heard even when it can be challenging … that’s important.”

Elliott said it was rewarding to experience lobby day on the hill — asking people to support bills or thanking them for their support.

“It was very empowering to talk to the important people and be heard,” Elliott said.

Utah is a young state, with the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau showing a median age of 31.3 years, with the country’s highest share of people under 18 at 29%.

Blouin said, “these are … young people who are going to have to live with the consequences of the actions that we take as legislators and the decisions we make as a state.”

Steed and two legislators — Rep. Angela Romero and Sen. Luz Escamilla, both Democrats from Salt Lake City – were scheduled to take part in a panel discussion at a symposium the coalition organized Saturday.

As for the future of the coalition, LaMalfa said he would like to bring chapters to high schools and the University of Utah. The group, he said, has made it clear the Great Salt Lake is their future.

“The more I talk to people, the more people seem to have a little bit of an understanding of Great Salt Lake,” he said. “That understanding seems to be getting steadily larger … [and] when every person in the state really knows about Great Salt Lake, it’ll be impossible to do anything but save her.”

Vanessa Hudson, a student at the University of Utah, wrote this story as part of a College of Humanities journalism course in partnership with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative and Amplify Utah. The collaborative is a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake – and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.

While the weather is warmer and the slacklines were rolled out across Salt Lake City’s parks last weekend, it’s not quite time to hear the “ch-ch-ch” of sprinklers whirring.

With rain forecast later this week, Stephanie Duer, the water conservation manager for the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities (which also covers Cottonwood Heights, Mill Creek, and Holladay) said many lawns on the Wasatch Front can likely wait a little longer.

“I don’t anticipate watering my backyard lawn for another week or two,” Duer said, “and we might have rain Thursday and Friday so I would wait until after that.”

Duer doesn’t like to give a definitive date for when to start watering your lawn, but if current temperatures hold, it seems like early May will likely be a good time to start.

The Utah Division of Water Resources publishes a lawn watering guide with customized advice for each county. Most of Utah, except for Grand, Kane, San Juan and Washington counties, currently don’t need irrigation. The guide is updated weekly.

Duer said watering guidelines may differ slightly for those with lawns on a slope that faces West or South and have very loose soil. Most lawns west of the Missouri River have clumpy, sticky, clay soil that can wait longer.

There are a few ways you can check whether or not your lawn needs to be watered.

If, after walking on your lawn, the blades remain bent over, it could be dry. Or, if your grass takes on a silvery hue it could be in need of some moisture. Duer also recommends grabbing a small screwdriver and gently plunging it into the soil. If you can’t get the screwdriver more than an inch into the soil, it’s time to water.

And when its time to turn those sprinklers on, Duer said there are many resources and approaches for those looking to lower their water usage.

Having a reasonable lawn footprint, choosing grasses that require less water, and purchasing sprinklers that efficiently spray water can all help Utahns enjoy green spaces and conserve at the same time. Utah State University offers a water check program that helps lawn caregivers create customized sprinkler schedules and identify water waste.

“Lawn isn’t bad,” Duer said. Green space and trees can help curb urban heat island effect. But Utahns can avoid overwatering or wasting water.

Simple changes to the way people water are already making a difference — in 2000 the peak demand (the day when people and institutions use the most water) for the Salt Lake Public Utilities services area was 210 million gallons of water. The peak demand now is between 165 to 175 million gallons.

Grass, even the popular but water-intensive Kentucky Blue variety, is fairly resilient. “Wait a day to water,” Duer said, “and you might find that you don’t have to water nearly as often as you think.”

Why don’t we talk more about guns?

Not that the issue doesn’t come up. But think about the public debate on gun control versus the one we’re having on abortion rights. Perhaps the two biggest long-running social issues in American politics, and the gulf does seem huge.

A lot of politicians who were historically opposed to abortion have clearly gotten very nervous about public opinion, worrying that being anti-choice is costing them votes. Take Arizona’s Kari Lake, one of the Republican Party’s most famous crazy-person candidates, now running for a Senate nomination. In 2022, when she was trying to get elected governor, she was a big fan of her state’s ancient ban on virtually all abortions (“a great law”).

But like many, many ambitious pols, Lake noticed that the public — even much of the conservative public — didn’t like seeing politicians mess with a woman’s right to control what happens with her own body. When a state Supreme Court suddenly upheld that Arizona abortion ban, circa 1864, Lake said that the old law was indeed “out of line with where the people of this state are.” Then she tried to drown the debate with a mystery statement. (“I chose life, but I’m not every woman. I want to make sure that every woman who finds herself pregnant has more choices so that she can make that choice that I made.”)

Got that?

Of course, if we’re talking about folks who are principle-free, there’s always Donald Trump. Our former president felt the pro-abortion-rights winds blowing when, after the Supreme Court majority he brags about creating declared abortion wasn’t a constitutional right, his party did worse than expected in the next House elections. Hoping to dump the problem on the governors, he embraced the theory that abortion was a state issue.

But when it comes to guns, Trump clearly hasn’t seen any need to search for a pseudo-middle ground. He recently attended an NRA gathering in Pennsylvania, where he assured his audience that “every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day.”

Now, the idea of making abortion a state issue only works if you’re just looking for a make-believe answer that might let you escape from discussing the subject. But we don’t have a visible gun consensus. Even mass school shooting tragedies like Sandy Hook and Uvalde didn’t bring the debate to a head. Many, many politicians are still trying to protect the right of Americans to own weapons while giving at least some verbal deference to the right of everybody else not to be shot.

Shootings qualify as “mass” when a minimum of four people — shooter excluded — are hit. At this writing there have been 119 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. (Really kind of depressing to be living in a country that requires the services of a Gun Violence Archive.) But don’t hold me to that number — it goes up fast. Just the other day one child was killed and 10 people injured at a backyard party in Chicago and 12 people were shot outside a New Orleans nightclub, one fatally.

These terrible gun stories often happen while people are pursuing what’s supposed to be their normal life. Late last month, an Uber driver in Ohio was killed when she was dispatched to the home of an 81-year-old man who believed she was working for somebody who was trying to scam him.

The last thing we should be leaving to the individual states is gun regulation, given that it’s extremely easy — and common — for weapons to travel across state lines. And anyway, you don’t really want to rely on state legislatures when it comes to national life-or-death issues. Basically, you’d be gambling on the wisdom and prudence of people like Colorado state Rep. Don Wilson, who recently had to apologize for leaving a loaded semi-automatic handgun in the state Capitol restroom.

Or the state senators in Tennessee, whose response to the terrible Nashville school shooting that left six people, including three children, dead was to pass a bill allowing teachers to carry concealed guns to work.

Is it possible for us to get to the same place on gun safety that we’re getting to on abortion — where the people who make the policy feel pressure to be sensible? Christian Heyne, an official at Brady, an organization against gun violence, thinks that when it comes to public attitudes, we’re getting there. “It’s really a new ballgame for us,” he said.

That’s in large part because of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed in 2022, which prevents misdemeanor offenders from purchasing guns for five years after their release from prison and enhances background checks for gun buyers younger than 21.

A landmark bill. Truly, that’s what they called it. Because we live in a country where when it comes to guns, basically sane can be totally impossible. One of the leaders behind the bill, Sen. Chris Murphy, feels Congress tackled both the abortion and gun issues because history forced it to. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the abortion protection in Roe v. Wade triggered an effort to pass some new authorization. And guns went back on the agenda after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, took the lives of 19 students and two teachers.

Ordinary citizens, Murphy said, were drenched in “the feeling someone else controls their bodies and the fear that their child won’t come home from school.”

So, changes on both fronts. But totally irresponsible — sometimes totally criminal — people can still buy guns through online or gun-show setups and sell them to dealers who specialize in selling them to the exact people we don’t want to see walking around armed. Changes have been made, but the setup is still … scary. Women’s rights rule on the abortion front — or at least in states that want to restrict them, politicians are trying to disguise their intent. But the gun lobby still reigns on the shooting side of things. And Trump, for one, courts them with gusto.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

With its plans to build a skyscraper on Salt Lake City’s Main Street still stalled, a Texas-based developer announced it will ramp up conversion of a well-known office high-rise on nearby South Temple into luxury apartments.

One of the state’s tallest cranes is now mounted in front of the cream-colored tower on 136 E. South Temple — poised to start heavy exterior work on remaking the 59-year-old, known to longtime residents as the University Club Tower, into 217 high-end dwellings with lavish amenities.

At 25 stories, the tower will be renamed Seraph, a luxury living community remodeled for quality and sustainability and located near City Creek Center, a TRAX stop and other urban attractions — meaning, its homes are likely to rent at the high end of market rates.

Hines, a global real estate company, has released new renderings for its elegant final visions of the lobby, pool, living units and rooftop deck highlighting the upgrade of the 217,000-square-foot building before its beige exterior cladding gets peeled off by Big-D Construction and new finishes are readied toward a completion date in late 2025.

Houston-based Hines said it had changed its initial designs and lowered the project’s apartment count from 255 units to add three-bedroom penthouses to the mix — in recognition, the firm said, of demand and a city emphasis on bringing more family-friendly housing to the urban core.

Dusty Harris, Hines senior managing director, said in a statement the company hoped the remade apartment tower would “offer a new, reimagined product that will be highly attractive for this growing market.”

The project also apparently pencils out financially for the firm, while its proposal of more four years ago to build 400 apartments at the site of the demolished Utah Theater on Main Street in partnership with the city has languished.

Status on Main Street tower

Until the latest South Temple announcement, Hines has stayed largely quiet about its halted plans for a 31-story luxury skyscraper in place of the playhouse, also known to some historic preservationists and fans of the performance hall as the Pantages Theater.

The company rushed in April 2022 to demolish the historic and run-down venue and take the site off city hands as part of a deal with the Redevelopment Agency to replace it with a 400-apartment tower that would include some rent-subsidized units, a pocket park and other features.

In exchange for those promised concessions — and guarantees some of the theater’s historic elements would be documented and salvaged — the RDA handed the property to Hines for zero dollars.

A month after the razing, Hines sought an extension from the city on its construction timeline. It would eventually cite financial challenges and the loss of a crucial capital backer for the Main Street deal as lending tightened and slowed many commercial projects.

Two years later, the emptied site along Main Street still sits dormant — while Hines is now making clear the skyscraper development isn’t dead.

“We continue to be fully committed to the project and the Salt Lake community,” Harris said. “We’re dedicating significant time and resources to ensure the success of this project — despite unprecedented market changes over the last several months.”

There has been no definitive word nor new detail from City Hall on progress for that project. An RDA spokesperson would say only that “the RDA and Hines are currently negotiating modifications to the agreements and development schedule,” with no elaboration.

Conversions ‘are difficult’

Demand for new downtown housing at the luxury end and the project’s adaptive approach to construction, though, have made the South Temple conversion viable, according to Harris — despite obstacles.

The South Temple overhaul is valued at more than $70 million, according to city permits. It amounts to a prominent and telling office-to-residential conversion — not least for its timing — in downtown, where office occupancies continue to sag below pre-pandemic levels and housing at many price points is in short supply.

Depressed persistently by remote work since the pandemic, vacancies for offices in the Salt Lake City-Provo area hit a new peak in 2023, according to an industry report from commercial brokers at CBRE — wrapping the year with around a quarter of all space vacant and available.

At the same time, in-migration to Utah’s population centers, while slowing over the past year, remains at historic highs and the city’s growing downtown is buoying demand for housing for sale and rent.

The South Temple project, Harris said, is also a first worldwide for the privately held real estate investment firm, which expects to use it as a model as it does more adaptive reuse projects.

Office-to-residential conversions “are incredibly difficult,” he said on a recent tour of the gutted tower after months of interior demolition that has stripped it to a shell.

Converting floor plans for what were once office, mechanical and parking levels of the former University Club Tower to residential use, Harris said, has meant removing or overhauling virtually all of its plumbing, electrical, heating and other systems. The remake is also adding a floor by converting the roof into a tree-lined gathering spot, with panoramic views.

Records show Hines has been working on the building’s internal overhaul since at least March 2023.

The conversion will deliver studios, one- and two-bedroom units along with three-bedroom penthouses sometime in fall 2025, with high-end finishes throughout such as marble surfaces and floor-to-ceiling glass. It also plays to vintage details of the building, built in 1965.

The overhaul will add a pool, clubroom, distinct rooftop lounge and other attractions to heighten its appeal to the well-heeled. The building’s familiar exterior and windows will also be redone, in more of a gray and metallic theme.

Hines said that improving sustainability is also driving aspects of its remake at South Temple, including the reuse of concrete and steel from the existing structure to lower the project’s carbon emissions.

Seraph, according to Harris, “represents a fusion of the past and the future,” and a move toward higher quality in Salt Lake City’s downtown living.

Do you believe in miracles? Not the kind that come on the ice, via the most legendary and unlikely win in sports history — by the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team over the mighty Russians in 1980. No. The kind, rather, that seem to stretch straight from the heavens, from the hand of God, touching and making a profound difference in the lives of ordinary humans down here on the rock we call Earth.

I do. I believe. And I’ll tell you why in a personal and private way that I’ve rarely shared with anyone. Forgive me if that offends. As I do, though, I add a big ol’ “yeah, but” to the narrative.

Understanding the reasons for miracles is complicated, beyond my reach, and if you’re also a believer, maybe beyond yours. Miracles are, in a strange flip of the metaphor, a wildfire blowing in the wind, torching some houses and leaving others wholly unscathed. OK, the opposite of that.

The questions remain: Why is heavenly help extended in some circumstances and not others? Why are some tragedies averted and some not? Why are some individuals saved or healed or brought back from the edge of pain or peril or death and some are not?

Beats me.

One thing I do know: When miracles arrive, it’s not clearly because of worthiness or any kind of measure of it. As the memorable line from the movie “Unforgiven” goes, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” You don’t earn a miracle. Some say certain divine happenings come via faith. A problem with that conclusion is that there are people of extreme faith who call on the powers of heaven for something extraordinary, to help a loved one or to fix something that’s broken, and the help is withheld or the fix never comes.

You hear stories, meanwhile, about faithful folks who lose their car keys, so they say a quick prayer and — bingo — what was once lost is suddenly found.

Questions abound

I imagine those kinds of tales really bother fervent believers who call out for divine assistance in matters much more important and the miracle doesn’t kick in. People at church, whatever church is attended, need to be careful about tossing around their miracles — because they can be hurtful to those who, for whatever reason or for no reason at all, were left to suffer.

So, let’s set that right out front before we go any further.

If you believe in a higher holy power, you are blessed to do so, but remember that if calls for the miraculous have gone unheeded, it’s not your fault or the fault of the afflicted. It’s not anybody’s fault. There must be something else in the mix, some “plan” for something better, something not yet fully grasped, that will come into play in a massive way at some point.

Nonbelievers will scoff at that. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, coincidences happen to all people, and that’s life and death in the random, day-to-day existence in a fierce jungle.

Even for believers, hope is sometimes hard to dial in on, like when folks at a funeral say So-and-So, the dearly departed, was called away for some significant eternal purpose … but So-and-So is a young mother leaving behind four young children. It’s hard to figure what eternal purpose would or could be more pressing, more urgent than teaching and rearing and caring for and cuddling the little ones left crying at the casket, at the loss of their beloved mother.

She may have been prayed for by loved ones, tears may have been spilled on pillows in the pleading for a miracle, and now she is gone.

I don’t pretend to know about that, any of it, not the whys or the hows, the whens and the wheres of what’s happened or what’s to come. The wildfire jumps — and it doesn’t jump. It’s baffling and heartbreaking.

And when divine intervention is granted, when miracles do occur, it’s just as baffling and amazing. God only knows heaven’s reasoning.

I had nothing to do with my miracle, other than to benefit from it.

My miracle

I was born at the start of March 1957, which, yeah, was a long, long time ago, and it was all good, except for the fact that I was supposed to be born at the start of June. I showed up three months early, weighing between 2 and 3 pounds, and afterward lost half a pound. Doctors told my mom and dad to forget about it, that I was a goner.

Advances certainly have been made in saving the lives of premature babies over the past 67 years, but back then, it was rare, almost unheard of, at least that’s what my parents were told by the medical professionals they presumed knew about such things.

It was early on a Sunday morning, so my father sent word to his Latter-day Saint ward asking fellow congregants to fast and pray for my mother and me.

They did. And much to the shock of the doctors and nurses on hand, all of whom were capable and caring, I’m told, my mom came through it and I lived.

That was a miracle.

In later years, I told my dad that if he hadn’t done that and I had died, I would have gone, according to Latter-day Saint doctrine, straight to heaven — a done deal. Mission accomplished. Instead, I survived and have gone on to live my life, stumbling and bumbling along my way. And now, or at least one day, some day, I’ll have to answer to my maker for my mistakes and — based on what some of you communicate to me — also the things I write and ask, do and say.

A shoutout to Jesus, then, for his grace and mercy.

I’m not sure I ever thanked those people in that congregation all those years ago — or whether they had a whole lot to do with my survival. Either way, I wish to thank them now. Thanks also to the doctors and nurses for their expertise and tender care.

In the mysteries of God’s disbursement of miracles, some given, some withheld, as a believer, I’m uncertain about those whys and hows. I can only trust there are reasons for the joy and eventual healing in the sorrow. In my case, thankful hearts replaced the initial tears spilled on my parents’ pillows, the ones that have long since dried.

For those whose tears have not dried, whose miracle heretofore went unextended, here’s to the hope that delayed miracles are yet ahead, granted according to the reasoning that only the Almighty understands.

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

Editor’s note: This story discusses sexual assault. If you need to report or discuss a sexual assault in Utah, you can call the Rape and Sexual Assault Crisis Line at 801-736-4356. The National Sexual Assault Hotline is 800-656-4673.

Logan • In the years following a federal investigation, multiple lawsuits and changes in leadership, Utah State University says that its students feel safe on campus.

A new survey regarding sexual misconduct by USU published last month says the vast majority of students feel secure on campus. Of the students who responded to the survey, 98% said they feel safe on campus, and 86% of student participants thought USU staff respond fairly and appropriately to sexual misconduct allegations.

The latter number is a noticeable improvement from 2017, the first year of conducting the survey and the same year the U.S. Department of Justice began its investigation of USU’s handling of sexual assaults. Back then, 52% of student respondents believed the university responded appropriately to allegations of sexual misconduct. The survey is done every two years by the university.

However, only 10% of USU’s student population responded to the latest study, the lowest turnout since the beginning of the biennial review. Student turnout from the 2017, 2019 and 2021 surveys were 45%, 26% and 14%, respectively.

Despite the declining numbers, Utah State is still confident the survey reflects the overall sentiment on campus.

The Salt Lake Tribune and Utah Public Radio interviewed eight USU students, and nearly all said they feel safe on campus, but there is always more that can be done to protect students from sexual assault or misconduct.

Claire Ott, a junior in her fourth year at USU, said she hasn’t experienced any safety issues while on campus in Logan.

“I feel pretty safe on campus,” Ott told The Tribune. “There are the occasional incidents and things I’ll hear about, but, me personally … it’s been pretty safe in my experience.”

Ott, who did not take the survey, emphasized that campus safety is subjective, and her experience shouldn’t negate the experiences of others. “I’ve felt very safe, though I know that things do happen,” Ott said.

“Trust doesn’t come free”

Cody Carmichael, Utah State’s Title IX Coordinator, said despite the decreasing survey turnout, he believes the study is reflective of campus.

Carmichael, who started at USU last July, said the recent report reflects positive changes at the university, including the rising number of students and staff on campus who know how to file a sexual misconduct report.

“Since we began doing this report in 2017, we have seen just positive upticks in almost every category that you can really imagine, or every category that we ask questions about,” he said.

Carmichael said consistent communication between university departments — like housing services, student affairs, and public safety — has helped build trust between students and administrators.

“Trust doesn’t come free,” Carmichael said. “We can ask people to trust us, but we have to show that we’re deserving of that trust and that we’re actually doing what we need to do.”

Carmichael also noted how the USU Office of Equity, which houses the Title IX Office, has seen an increased number of people using its resources, according to the office’s 2022-2023 annual report. The report found there was a 25% increase in cases involving allegations of sexual misconduct or discrimination submitted to the office between August 2022 to July 2023.

“More people reporting means we’re doing our job, and the culture of the university is becoming more open and transparent,” Matthew Pinner, the executive director of the Office of Equity, said in a December news release. “More people are aware of the options and resources available to them when there’s an experience related to misconduct.”

Between the Office of Equity’s 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 reports, the largest increase in types of cases was regarding a hostile environment, jumping from 218 cases in the 2021-2022 report to 343 in the 2022-2023 report.

Utah State defines a hostile environment as, “unwelcome sex-based conduct determined by a reasonable person to be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to an employment or education program or activity.”

In those same years, allegations of sexual assault made to the Office of Equity increased from 87 to 100. The university’s most recent security and safety report, which details on-campus crimes reported to law enforcement, showed there were 4 allegations of rape reported in 2020, 9 in 2021, and 9 in 2022.

Across Logan, the annual number of alleged rapes reported to local police has increased slightly in recent years. Cases grew from 33 in 2019 to 37 in 2020 before dropping to 28 in 2021, according to statistics provided by the Logan Police Department. In 2022 and 2023, Logan police received 34 and 36 reports in the respective years.

What students are saying

In addition to the Office of Equity, USU also has campus resources like the Sexual Assault & Anti-Violence Information Office, or SAAVI.

Unlike the Office of Equity, SAAVI is a confidential resource for students, faculty and staff — meaning the office can provide support for victims without having to report assaults or harassment to more official university channels like the Title IX Office.

One of SAAVI’s main goals is making victims aware of their options, according to director Jenny Erazo.

“SAAVI advocates go through a specialized 40-hour training and can help you navigate your options to get help and report, obtain a forensic exam, accompany you to the police, or answer questions about sexual violence, relationship violence, or stalking,” Erazo said in an email.

Erazo, who has worked at SAAVI for 11 years, said sexual violence is an issue at every campus across the country and thinks it would be naive to assume Utah State is any different.

“There is always work to do to make our campus a safer place either in trying to prevent violence from happening and/or responding in a trauma-informed way to folks who have experienced violence,” she said in an email.

Erazo’s opinion reflects what students told The Tribune. Most of those students said while they do feel safe, the university shouldn’t be letting their guard down.

Mary Littlefield, a junior at USU, said she feels safe on campus, but said there’s always more that can be done for victims of assault.

Claire McCallum, also a junior, agreed. McCallum said it takes courage to contact campus resources regarding sexual misconduct.

First-year student Jason McNeil said he feels safe on campus during the day but is more worried about safety at night. He added he works on campus and went through training sessions through USU regarding safety procedures and how to identify sexual misconduct while on the job.

Daniel Baysinger, a freshman, said he feels safe at USU but acknowledges that as a man he’s less likely to be assaulted on campus.

“Campus could be safer for women,” he said, “and there should always be improvements.”

Tired of being stuck at train crossings? Worried about getting hit by a car speeding off Interstate 15? Salt Lake City officials are aiming to address those concerns in a new 20-year transportation plan.

Utah’s capital is in the process of adopting a new citywide transportation document to guide policy. On Tuesday, officials briefed the City Council on the goals, including an aim to heal the east-west divide.

“It became very clear in the course of engagement with this plan that the east-west divide is the single-largest transportation issue in the city,” city transportation planner Joe Taylor told the council, “and that that issue is well beyond the bounds of just a mobility issue, that it has psychological and investment implications that have likely predated the incorporation of Salt Lake City and persist to this day.”

The city last created a full transportation plan in 1996. Since then, Utah has hosted the Winter Olympics, expanded I-15 and built the TRAX light rail system, creating new challenges and opportunities for west-siders trying to run errands or go out for dinner on the east side of the freeway and the rail lines.

Healing the east-west divide is one of eight sections in the proposed plan, which paints a grim picture of how I-15 and train tracks affect the lives of west-siders.

The west side makes up roughly a third of the city’s 204,000 residents but sees more than three-quarters of its fatal crashes. West-side census tracts have worse air quality than at least 80% of other census tracts nationwide. And street-level train crossings, the plan says, happen hundreds of times a day with no published schedules, impacting travel time reliability for people crossing the divide.

In the document, transportation officials outlined four strategies for mending the city. First, they want to develop a list of projects. They then would prioritize making train and freeway crossings safer and more predictable by adding better signs and redesigning interchanges.

They also want to build more community spaces and beautify passageways underneath the interstate. Finally, they hope to build more well-connected neighborhoods by establishing mobility hubs with additional amenities — like a community center at Redwood Road and North Temple, where multiple transit lines intersect — and creating more public spaces above I-15, similar to the Seattle Convention Center that spans Interstate 5.

Included in the plan’s section on the east-west divide is a list of bigger, bolder ideas that transportation officials believe would make even greater progress reconnecting the two sides of town, such as burying the freeway and train tracks and crafting more connections through the berm that carries I-15 traffic south of 900 South. The city also could pursue reconfiguration of the freeway’s interchanges at 500 South, 600 South and 900 South to better link neighborhoods.

Utah’s capital can’t reach those goals of reconnection on its own, though. Officials will rely on agreements with outside entities to make progress.

The Utah Department of Transportation is pursuing further I-15 expansion, possibly widening the divide. The Utah Transit Authority runs buses and trains in the city. A private company, Union Pacific, is responsible for most of the blockages at rail crossings.

Having a plan that spells out city officials’ goals clearly would help propel negotiations with those entities, including the planning group Wasatch Front Regional Council.

“So, having a council-adopted plan it’s really powerful and it triggers certain things,” said Jon Larsen, the city’s transportation director. “It gives a lot more power to the conversations we have as staff with UDOT, UTA, WFRC staff, because it’s not just us coming up with some idea. This is something that has gone through a full process … It makes the conversations a lot more serious.”

Public commenters said they liked the plan overall but added that it didn’t go far enough to endorse the Rio Grande Plan, a grassroots effort to trench the rail lines and restore train service to the Rio Grande Depot.

“My only concern is that the City Council and the plan is not dreaming big enough,” said Robbie Stutchbury, a Glendale resident and University of Utah student. “We can afford to make large and bold moves and show not just to the council’s constituents but the rest of the state and country that Salt Lake City is ready to build for the future. This is why I suggest the council consider the Rio Grande Plan as an important part of the city’s future goals. This plan would free up high-value urban areas downtown and allow the plan to better fulfill its goal of connecting the east and west sides of the valley.”

The City Council intends to discuss the plan further before adoption. Council members are set to take action on it sometime next month. If adopted, city officials will look to pursue projects that match up with the goals.

Some connection projects, like a proposed multiuse path along 400 South that will include public art, already line up with the document and are in motion.

Proposals to improve connection points haven’t always been embraced, though. The controversial 400 North underpass at I-15, originally proposed by UDOT, also links well with the plan, but city officials are no longer pursuing it after public outcry.

In the wake of recent developments with the Fifth Ward meetinghouse and ongoing discussions about the significance of historic places, it is crucial to emphasize why these old and storied sites matter, especially here in Utah.

Established in 1966, Utah Heritage Foundation — now Preservation Utah — was the first statewide historic preservation organization in the western United States. Through dedicated efforts, we’ve campaigned to save and protect historic architecture foundational to Utah’s character. Our efforts can be seen in the saving, rehabilitation and reuse of countless residential and commercial structures, historic districts and Main Streets throughout Utah, such as the Heber Tabernacle, Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Salt Lake City & County Building, Cache County Courthouse in Logan, the Marmalade neighborhood and two First Security Bank Buildings in downtown Salt Lake City. These, and many more historic spaces, are the places that make up the unique character of our towns, cities and neighborhoods.

Historic places in Utah are not mere relics of the past; they are living testaments to the cultures and communities that have shaped our state. From the ancient petroglyphs etched into canyon walls by Indigenous peoples to the Victorian-era mansions that line the streets of Salt Lake City, each site represents a chapter in our history.

Preserving historic sites fosters a sense of place and continuity in our rapidly changing state. They provide landmarks that anchor our communities and serve as focal points for civic pride.

Think of Temple Square in Salt Lake City. This iconic location encompasses several significant landmarks, including the Salt Lake Temple, the Tabernacle and the Assembly Hall. Temple Square holds deep religious and historical importance for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and visitors interested in Utah’s pioneer history. Or the Golden Spike National Historical Park, located at Promontory Summit, that commemorates the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met in 1869, connecting the East and West coasts of the United States.

One of the most compelling reasons to protect our historic places is their economic benefits to our state. Heritage tourism, fueled by interest in historic sites, contributes significantly to Utah’s economy. Visitors from across the globe are captivated by our state’s unique historical offerings, which translates into significant revenue for local businesses and sustained job creation. Temple Square stands out as a prime example of how heritage tourism drives economic growth. Millions of tourists and pilgrims come here each year, attracting visitors who spend on accommodations, dining, transportation and souvenirs. Park City exemplifies the economic impact of heritage tourism, as well. Originally a silver mining town, Park City has preserved its historic Main Street and numerous Victorian-era buildings. The historic charm of Main Street enhances the visitor experience and generates revenue for local businesses. The ghost towns of southern Utah offer a different yet equally compelling draw for heritage tourism. These abandoned mining towns, like Grafton and Silver Reef, transport visitors back in time, offering a glimpse into Utah’s pioneering days.

Cities and towns that embrace their heritage and allow it to persist often acquire a vibrant, diverse ambiance — an effect that even the most skilled architects struggle to replicate in new construction.

Preservation boosts real estate values and nurtures local businesses, ensuring that historic main streets and downtowns remain economically viable. Heritage tourism emerges as a substantial economic driver, particularly evident in places that have retained their historic character. Developers are realizing that funds spent on rehabilitating historic buildings are investments in the future, potentially transforming these structures into the centerpiece of a revitalized city.

Central to this narrative are the core principles of the National Historic Preservation Act — improving quality of life, fostering urban functionality, enhancing livability and infusing cities with vitality. The nation is beginning to recognize that staying connected with its past is essential; we need not resign ourselves to a homogenized Utah where individual identities and our sense of place are lost. The preservation of historic spaces is not merely a matter of nostalgia or sentimentality; it is an investment in our future. What we invest in now is what we have in the future, and once gone, we cannot get back what was lost.

Brandy Strand is the Executive Director of Preservation Utah, and has been working for community revitalization for Utahns for over 20 years.

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.

For the second year in a row, lawyer Nathan Oman drove roughly six hours each way to buy a whole lot of liquor that he, as a practicing Latter-day Saint, will never drink.

And half-eaten loaves of sandwich bread. And opened boxes of cereal. And what he estimates are probably hundreds of pounds of other leaven-containing foods — they are all his for the next roughly two weeks.

He does this in preparation for Passover, a holiday he does not celebrate. And that’s precisely the point.

According to Jewish law, no amount of yeast, sourdough or baking powder — leaven — is allowed in one’s home during the week of Passover, which began Monday evening, as per the biblical Book of Exodus. Across the globe, the days leading up to the holiday are marked by furious cleaning and bonfires of leavened products for the observant.

But what if you have a yeasty product — say, a really nice liquor collection — you’d prefer not to set aflame?

Jewish law has a plan for that. Rather than burn it, one can sell it to a friendly “gentile” willing to take legal ownership over it for the duration of the holiday.

Oman’s Orthodox Jewish friend didn’t have to ask him twice.

“I was fascinated,” he wrote in a story published by Wayfare magazine, “by the idea of contracting around divine law.”

Twice now, Oman, a law professor at William & Mary, has made the six-hour drive from his home in Virginia to sit down with Rabbi Itamar Rosensweig outside Philadelphia and sign a contract written almost entirely in Hebrew. In exchange for the goods, Oman provides 200 silver dollar coins (gifted to him by the rabbi) and, for reasons having to do with arguments over Jewish law, a handkerchief.

Titles to tequila and Oreos are not all he is (temporarily) buying. Oman also purchases, for the briefest of periods, the locations within the residences where those items are housed.

“I have leases on little cupboards and closets,” he explained Monday in an interview, “all over suburban Philadelphia.”

That’s not all. Say the owner of a vacation home doesn’t want to bother with a pre-Passover cleaning. Oman can help with that, too, taking short-term ownership over a beachfront apartment.

“I won’t be able to get down to Florida by May 1,” he said. “But it’s nice to know that, at least in theory, I have legal rights to a boat down there.”

There are layers as to why Oman makes the trips to Philly. For one, the self-described “law/religion contract geek” gets a major kick out of it.

“To me, going up and chewing over the contract language with the rabbi,” he said, “is a lot of fun.”

For another, he sees it as kindness to a longtime friend and his friend’s faith.

“I’m very sympathetic to this religious community,” he said. “They want to live according to their religious beliefs and their religious law, and I think that’s an inherently valuable and dignified project.”

Oman, a devout member of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, isn’t naive. He knows his interest in religion is out of step with a growing number of his fellow Americans. This apathy, more than any other factor, he believes, threatens the religious fabric in much of the modern world.

“I don’t think religious persecution is a big problem in the United States,” he explained. “I do think … it’s very easy to live your life in such a way that religion doesn’t matter. It doesn’t impinge on it, and you don’t really even remember that it’s there.”

By engaging in “weird rituals that you wouldn’t otherwise do and don’t have any purpose other than to acknowledge and comply with religious authority,” Oman is doing his best to swim — or drive, as the case may be — against this stream of forgetfulness.

That’s why next year, when the weather begins to warm once more and the cherry blossoms bloom, you’ll find Oman piling the miles onto the family car, winding his way north to sign a contract for food he will never see, cupboards he will never open and booze he will never taste.

A West Jordan man who has been arrested for firing a rifle through the floor of his apartment, wounding a neighbor, blamed the shooting on his dog.

On Saturday at about 3:30 p.m., police received a report of a shooting at the Upperwest Apartments at 3283 W. Jordan Line Pkwy. When officers arrived, a woman who lives there told them she had been struck in the arm by a bullet that came through her bedroom ceiling.

The bullet grazed the woman’s forearm — it drew blood, but she was not seriously injured and declined medical attention, according to a probable cause statement.

When officers went to the apartment above, they stopped a man who was walking down the hall. The 20-year-old said he lived in that apartment, and at first denied that he had fired a gun. Later, according to police, he made an “excited utterance” that he was “removing his gun from the top rack when his dog jumped on him,” and that his hand “slipped … and he fired the gun.”

He later told investigators that his dog jumped on him, knocking the gun off a table, according to the probable cause statement. He said it landed barrel-side down and the gun went off. He told police he didn’t see a hole in the carpet and thought the gun had fired a blank round that he got when he purchased the gun.

After obtaining a search warrant, police searched the man’s apartment and found a .223 caliber AR rifle, ammunition, marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

The man was booked into Salt Lake County jail for investigation of felony discharge of a firearm, possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person, and possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. He is being held without bail.

As of Tuesday morning, the man has not been charged. The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not name suspects unless they have been charged with a crime.

The Salt Lake City School District told parents Friday it would scrap its plan to deliver a presentation to all students about Utah’s new transgender public restroom ban, informing children about which restrooms they could use at school.

The presentation was meant to tell students, “If your sex is designated as this, you go to this bathroom, and designated as that, you go to that bathroom,” Superintendent Elizabeth Grant said at a recent school board meeting.

But a copy shared with parents beforehand apparently did not “acknowledge the existence” of transgender and nonbinary children, prompting blowback from student families, said Emerson Elementary parent Kristen Kinjo.

The district initially planned to share the presentation with students while they were in class — during homeroom or a school’s weekly broadcast, for example — by May 1, the day certain enforcement mechanisms of the law, HB257, will go into effect.

Instead, district officials are now reaching out to impacted families directly to make sure transgender and nonbinary children “have the information they need to create a plan that meets both their student’s needs and the requirements of the law,” according to an email the district sent to parents late Friday afternoon.

If a student is not comfortable in a school restroom that the law requires them to use, the district will help them create a support plan outlined in the district’s G-24 Gender Inclusion policy, Grant said at the board meeting.

“We have students who are going to be placed in very difficult positions by this bathroom bill,” Grant added. “And what our team has done has been sensitive and attentive to the law at the same time.”

‘Lack of clarity’ on how districts should be notifying students

District spokesperson Yándary Chatwin said the district decided to roll back its original plan because of a “lack of clarity” in the law, not parent feedback.

According to the bill’s language, school districts are only required to give notice to students of how the law will work, not necessarily share a presentation like the one the district planned with all children during class.

“We were erring on the side of notifying all students, and some folks were interpreting it differently,” she said. “Our intent has been to follow the laws — to make sure that we’re complying with the requirements of us as a school district.”

Utah State Board of Education spokesperson Ryan Bartlett said in a clarifying statement sent to “education partners” Tuesday that the board “has not provided guidance or direction, nor has USBE been directed by the state Legislature to issue guidance or direction, to [local education agencies, such as school districts] regarding this bill.”

He added that school districts “will determine how best to communicate the requirements listed in the bill to the students and families in their respective communities.”

Bill sponsor Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, later reiterated USBE’s message in a statement Thursday.

“Recognizing that each school and school district is unique, with unique students, families, and communities, that requirement is left to the determination of [local education agencies], so as long as it is communicated in a common sense, age-appropriate manner that accounts for the needs of all students,” she wrote.

School ‘should be a safe place’

The Salt Lake City School District’s initial plans also changed Friday after the wave of parent feedback, said Kinjo, whose fourth grader goes to Emerson.

“All the parent chats were blowing up,” she said, noting that the district gave parents the choice to opt their children out of the presentations. “Everyone wanted to keep their kids out of this training.”

In response, Kinjo organized a “15-minute dance party” outside of her child’s school on Friday, protesting the new law as well as the school’s planned presentation to students. There, they passed out transgender pride flags, buttons and stickers.

The school had planned to run the district’s K-5 version of the presentation during its morning announcements that day, but pulled it after Grant told all district schools to do so, according to an email Emerson’s principal sent families 35 minutes before the “dance party” and rally.

A copy of the slideshow, which Kinjo shared with The Tribune, stated: “If you were assigned a girl at birth, you need to use the girl’s bathroom ... if you were assigned a boy at birth, you need to use the boy’s bathroom at school.”

Kinjo said her issue with the district’s planned presentation was that it essentially told students they are either a boy or a girl.

“We see that as threatening an already vulnerable population of children, to tell them that they don’t exist in a space that should be a safe place,” Kinjo said.

Grant told The Tribune that she will be working with her team “about what our next steps are” regarding notifying district students of the new law.

Monday was the last day Utah families could apply for one of 10,000 school vouchers through the brand-new Utah Fits All scholarship — and with number of applicants nearly triple the number of available scholarships, only a fraction of hopefuls will snag one.

The money can be used beginning this fall for private school tuition, children’s ballet lessons, karate classes, homeschooling expenses and more.

Between February 28, when the application portal opened, and Monday, a total of 15,914 applications were submitted, representing 27,270 students, because some families submitted one application for multiple siblings, according to the Alliance for Choice in Education (ACE). That’s the organization hired by the Utah State Board of Education to manage the voucher program and application process.

“High demand for the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program is proof that Utah families are hungry for high-quality educational options,” said Jackie Guglielmo, vice president of ESA Programs at ACE Scholarships, in a Tuesday news release.

Scholarship recipients will be selected based on priority categories outlined in Utah law, the ACE news release stated. Families will be notified if they’ve received a scholarship or have been waitlisted on May 3.

How applications will be prioritized

Utah law requires preference be given to low-income families. Applications will be prioritized in the following order:

1. Students who participated in Utah Fits All the previous school year (not applicable for 2024-25).
2. Students with a family income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, or about $60,000 for a family of four.

3. Siblings of students who participated in the program the prior year (not applicable for 2024-25).

4. Students with a family income between 200% and 555% of the federal poverty level, or a range of about $60,000 to $166,500 for a family of four.

5. All other applicants.

Initially, the state had allocated $42 million for the program’s inaugural year, which begins this fall. That amounted to enough funding for about 5,000 students to each receive an allotted $8,000 share.

But lawmakers in late February injected another $40 million into the pot — months before the program even launches — raising the number of available scholarships to roughly 10,000.

Rep. Candice Pierucci, R-Herriman, and Sen. Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, had originally requested a $108 million funding boost to the program, citing overwhelming demand for the vouchers that exceeded then-appropriations.

Cullimore said during a February meeting that lawmakers knew what that demand was because nonprofit organization Utah Education Fits All had been helping to collect “pre-applications” in anticipation of the voucher program launch.

Its database indicated that 17,000 parents, representing 35,000 students, had intended to apply, although the actual count appears to be lower.

Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye, a Harvard-trained scholar in global religion, did not start her academic career expecting to write about her own faith and the challenges of human existence.

But as the generous scholar delved into various religious traditions — including a Chinese Christian group, the True Jesus Church — she could see parallels to her upbringing in California as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And since Inouye’s colon cancer diagnosis in 2017 at 37 — with four young children — spiritual questions became more urgent and personal to the marathon-running mom in colorful knit caps.

“In the past and currently, I’m on this two-week chemo cycle, which is like a mini-cycle of death and resurrection. I’ll do the chemo and feel myself getting more and more tired and sick for the first couple of days,” the Asian American Latter-day Saint writer said last year on The Salt Lake Tribune’s “Mormon Land” podcast. “And then, over the course of the next 12 days, I’ll get better and better and feel stronger and stronger. Then I’m ready to go for the next one.”

It’s not “actual resurrection,” she said, “but it teaches me that things have beginnings and ends, that you can take a lot, that change is constant.”

That cycle ended early Tuesday, her husband reported, when Inouye died in his arms while her brother held her hand.

She was 44.

As news of her death washed like a tidal wave over social media, friends from across the Mormon universe commented on the loss of the petite, sharply observant and deeply compassionate thinker most knew simply as “Melissa.”

She was “a once-in-a-generation mind and a once-in-a-generation human being,” a friend commented on social media. “A lodestar of intellectual generosity.”

Melissa, wrote another, “truly represented the very best that Mormonism has to offer.”

She was “someone I loved and respected so much, now dancing in the skies,” Utah Valley University President Astrid Tuminez said. “[I am] brokenhearted, but so grateful to have known this most unique, clear-eyed, loving soul.”

Inouye, a historian for the state’s predominant religion, maintained friendships across the spectrum of belief and practice, doubt and devotion, inside and outside of faith communities.

She “exemplified and inspired courage,” wrote Farina King, professor of Native American studies at the University of Oklahoma, “especially courage to be yourself and share your story, your voice.”

That voice, all agreed, will be sorely missed but will resonate in her writings for years to come.

In the bosom of a community

Inouye grew up in what she described as a “very idyllic and close-knit ward [congregation] in Costa Mesa, California. I just felt like nothing was ever wrong. Everyone was always awesome. I felt completely safe and loved.”

From there, the precocious student went to Harvard, where she earned a degree in East Asian studies.

She took 18 months off, though to serve a full-time Latter-day Saint mission in Taiwan, and married a former missionary, Joseph McMullin, who was her teacher at the Missionary Training Center and had also served in Taiwan. Together, they have four children.

Inouye graduated from the Ivy League school in 2003 and went on to complete a doctorate in 2011 in East Asian languages and civilization, writing her dissertation, “Miraculous Mundane: The True Jesus Church and Chinese Christianity in the 20th Century,” while living in Xiamen, China, and teaching at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

She taught in Hong Kong and was a senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. In 2019, her family moved to Utah, where she landed a job in the church’s history department.

Inouye helped create the Global Mormon Studies research network and was an advisory board member of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

Five years ago, Inouye published a series of essays, “Crossings: A Bald Asian American Latter-day Saint Woman Scholar’s Ventures Through Life, Death, Cancer, and Motherhood.”

All this research and travel gave Inouye an evolving appreciation for her Latter-day Saint community — beyond what she had experienced as a child.

“As an adult who had lived in different places, different countries, I noticed how in different places there are different aspects of the gospel that are emphasized,” she said on a “Mormon Land” podcast. “From that point of view, any group of Latter-day Saints in any place will be subject to the same pressures that are in society at large, susceptible to the same temptations and abuse of power, corruption, just like anyone else. But I don’t think this is a deal breaker. Indeed, I think it’s part of the genius of [church founder] Joseph Smith’s inspiration and organizational vision.”

Memorable metaphors

Laurie Maffly-Kipp, the new chair of Mormon studies at the University of Virginia, described Inouye as a master of metaphor.

Case in point: a 2012 piece she wrote for Religion News Service.

“If a person looks at faith like a string of Christmas lights, they demand that ‘light’ leap from one point to another along a single string of connections,” Inouye wrote. “If one junction along the string is flawed, then the whole string is dysfunctional. Or, if the whole string is functional, then every single junction must be perfect.”

But that simile, she said, is inadequate. One bad light — a troubling fact, person, policy or practice — need not darken a whole faith. At the same time, a glistening religion may yet have a bad bulb in the mix.

Sourdough bread, Inouye stated, is a more apt comparison.

“It begins with the starter, an unruly colony of wild yeasts and bacteria swimming together in starchy soup. There is nothing lovely or pure about sourdough starter. Its exuberance makes it sour on the verge of stinky, fermented bordering on decayed,” Inouye wrote. “Yet, when introduced into a properly balanced supply of flour, water and salt, the starter is a catalyst for building a complex, living community that results in heavenly bread.”

Religious organizations are “shaped by time and their environment,” she concluded, which can either lead them to corruption or to producing goodness. “Appreciating this goodness, and engaging productively with the complex processes that create it, is a project of intellect, not ignorance.”

A Zion society

Inouye’s final book, “Sacred Struggle: Seeking Christ on the Path of Most Resistance,” taught that a carefree, trouble-free world is not what humanity signed up for.

An easy earthly existence, under Mormon theology, was Satan’s plan, not God’s. Divine design, Inouye argued, calls instead for agency, personal growth, compassion and caring for others, and “living a life full of life” — the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, the hopes and the hopelessness — as God’s children learn to be more like their Heavenly Parents by following and finding Jesus.

That’s what makes the Latter-day Saint structure so effective, she said in her last Tribune interview.

“Such a beautiful thing about Mormonism is that it creates these really strong communities where people take liberties with each other because they assume a kinship, which one doesn’t normally assume in secular society,” Inouye said. “And because you just spend so much time with people — these mutual, entangling interactions that help you get to know people and support them in different ways.”

These sentiments echo notions she included in her essay for “A Book of Mormons; Latter-day Saints on a Modern-Day Zion.”

Life on Earth “is not a virtuoso operatic performance of angelic hosts, but a homely production in which a divine director is stuck with a troupe of second-string musicians and amateur actors who are always botching their lines,” Inouye said. “In the Mormon section of the orchestra pit, we stumble on, season after season: learning to play new instruments as needed, struggling to stay in tune, loyally attending rehearsal, folding and unfolding an endless array of chairs.”

Such building and rebuilding “is not merely a means to an end,” she concluded. “It is Zion itself.”

And now, as hundreds, maybe thousands, mourn Inouye’s death, there is one less sonorous instrument in the Mormon orchestra even as the faith’s symphony plays on.

Nursing student Maria Thomson thought she would be OK going to class this one time without her service dog, Daisy.

Thomson couldn’t afford another absence on her record, she said. Besides, her doctor said she would be safe attending without Daisy, a sheepadoodle who helps alert Thomson when she starts feeling the symptoms of her condition, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, which affects the autonomic nervous system.

It had been a rough few weeks for Thomson, then a student at the private, for-profit Joyce University of Nursing & Health Sciences in Draper. She was working to balance a demanding class load with flare-ups of her POTS symptoms.

Thomson asked to be excused early from an onsite class in February 2023 at St. Mark’s Hospital in Millcreek, and Joyce officials told her she would be marked absent, she said. Eventually, St. Mark’s gave her permission to leave, she said. Thomson learned later that the school counted her absent — and cited her for violating Joyce’s code of conduct, she said, because she contacted St. Mark’s officials about her POTS flare-up rather than going through Joyce’s protocols.

After seeking clarification about Daisy from Joyce officials — including sending a letter written by her lawyers — Thomson arrived at St. Mark’s on March 21, 2023, for another onsite class (called a “clinical”), without Daisy. When she got there, Thomson said, the head of clinicals for Joyce told her she was “a liability without Daisy,” and her instructor asked her to leave.

Two days later, Joyce’s legal team sent Thomson a letter, dismissing her from the school — and disrupting her dream of becoming a nurse.

Thomson — who said she was the school’s first student with a service dog — filed a federal lawsuit in June against Joyce, alleging the school did not give her proper accommodations for her disability under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In the letter informing Thomson of her expulsion, Joyce’s lawyers wrote, “Joyce University is confident it has complied with its obligations under the ADA and any other pertinent standard.”

A representative from Joyce University declined to comment for this article, because of the ongoing court case.

It’s a case, said Emily Shuman, director of the Rocky Mountain ADA Center, that illustrates what many people with disabilities say is a recurring problem with enforcing the ADA.

“There’s a lot of ignorance of the law,” Shuman said. “Civil rights laws for people with disabilities are not something anyone typically thinks about until they have to.”

‘I want to be like this one day’

Because of her health problems, Thomson has spent a lot of time in the company of nurses — and watching them work made her want to become one.

Once Thomson was flown by air ambulance, and the nurses who helped her through it stuck in her memory. “Those nurses were the ones that I was, like, ‘You guys are so smart. … I want to be like this one day,’” she said. “I wanted to give back to the nursing community and those who have helped me.”

Thomson, a 26-year-old who lives in Salt Lake City, has been dealing with POTS for seven years, but encountering the symptoms for 12. POTS is triggered by standing up after lying down. “Anything that you don’t have to think about — like your heart rate, blood pressure, all that kind of stuff — is dysregulated,” she said.

There’s no cure yet for POTS. Thomson said she’s able to manage the condition with medication, her central line (which “provides IV fluid therapy” to help with her blood pressure and heart rate), and the assistance of Daisy — who helps alert her for POTS symptoms, like when her heart rate elevates.

“The big part with Daisy — which I feel like people kind of miss — is that Daisy is an alert system,” Thomson said. “She’s not a cure. She will just tell me when my symptoms are flaring before they get bad.”

With Daisy’s assistance, Thomson said, she thought she would be able to fulfill her dream and attend nursing school. In January 2022, she enrolled in Ameritech College (which later changed its name to Joyce University), because, she said, of the school’s “decent reputation,” high job placement rate, its nurse licensure exam and the quality of its equipment.

At first, Thomson said, the school granted her some accommodations — for example, giving her time-and-a-half to complete tests, so she could deal with the brain fog that accompanies POTS. Thomson and her advocate, Joey Ramp-Adams, worked with the school in advance to establish those accommodations.

“We knew it was going to be harder, but we thought we would be able to present research and help kind of guide them down that path,” Thomson said.

In June 2022, Thomson, Ramp-Adams and the school’s ADA coordinator met to discuss a publication from The Journal of Professional Nursing, about how to accommodate students with service dogs in clinical settings. After that, Thomson said, she met with lab instructors at the start of every semester to introduce them to Daisy and work out logistics.

When the school changed its name to Joyce, Thomson said, it replaced its ADA coordinator with an employee who didn’t have training in that field. “That’s kind of where my problems began,” she said, “just because there wasn’t that person there that understood and was able to help me navigate certain situations.”

In June 2022, Thomson missed a pharmacology class because her central line was infected. She had a four-hour lab and exam scheduled the next day, which she missed and had to make up later. In the days that followed, she said she had problems getting the absence excused.

“When I asked for medical absences, they were like, ‘We’re not going to grant that for you.” She also asked to have more time to complete her test, because she was hospitalized for a couple of days.

Both women recalled one virtual meeting where Thomson had wanted Ramp-Adams to advocate for her, and Joyce would not give Ramp-Adams access. Shortly after that, Thomson said, the school’s dean said they would not excuse all medical-related absences but would review them on a “case-by-case” basis.

In November 2022, Thomson’s doctor, Brad D. Richards, who specializes in POTS, wrote a letter to the school, explaining her need for accommodations — including time-and-a-half for testing, and double time for more complicated courses. Later that month, Thomson said, she was told that “extending the days for exams is not an ADA accommodation that Joyce University grants.”

Around the same time, Thomson and her peers were getting to start their “clinicals” — placements at different health care facilities for onsite education. Finding a facility where Thomson could bring Daisy, she said, was difficult.

Thomson said the school “waited till the last minute to get me placements. Everybody else in my cohort was allowed to register themselves. … I was always told because you’re an ADA student, we register you. I was told, ‘Our normal students register themselves.’”

Absences and expulsion

The cascade of issues that led to Thomson’s expulsion from Joyce happened in a stretch of just over a month.

The first incident was on Feb. 22, 2023, when Thomson started her clinical at St. Mark’s. The next day, Daisy had a partially ruptured eardrum. “She was having vestibular issues, too, so she couldn’t really stand up,” Thomson said.

Thomson’s doctor, Dr. Richards, said she could attend her clinical without Daisy, so she did. A few hours into the clinical, though, her POTS symptoms flared up. Eventually, she said, St. Mark’s gave her permission to leave.

In the weeks that followed, Thomson said she would be asked by the assistant director of human resources at St. Mark’s and the head of risk management invasive questions about her disability, in front of her peers. She also received a notice that she violated the school’s code of conduct when Thomson contacted someone at St. Mark’s to schedule a meeting to talk about her POTS incident.

On March 14, Thomson went in again without Daisy, who was sick. She said she went in because she didn’t have another excused absence. When she arrived, she was told she already had used two absences — meaning the school had counted the absence from her February POTS flare-up.

Two days later, on March 16, Thomson’s lawyers sent a letter to the school, saying that she had been “treated in a discriminatory manner by Joyce University.” The letter demanded the school change her accommodations to allow for her absences, and remove the code-of-conduct violations from her record.

Thomson attended her clinical on March 21, because she said she had not received clarification about whether she could attend without Daisy, and she feared being marked for another absence. The head of clinicals at Joyce, she said, told her she was “a liability without Daisy.” Her clinical instructor then asked Thomson to leave.

Two days later, March 23, Thomson said she received a letter from Joyce’s legal team, dismissing her from the school. The letter went on at length to respond to the letter from Thomson’s lawyers, and argued that Thomson understood that Daisy should be with her during her clinicals.

On March 25, Thomson wrote to the school, seeking to appeal her dismissal. “I believe a failure of communication led to the events for which I have been dismissed,” she wrote. “At no time after the [February] episode did Joyce tell me they thought it unsafe for me to work without Daisy. Nor did they clearly state that I could not attend clinicals without her.”

Thomson filed her lawsuit on June 19. She received notification on Sept. 11 that the appeal of her dismissal was denied.

What is the ADA law? How does it help?

Thomson is suing Joyce under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Title III is the part of the law that applies to private businesses, said Nate Crippes, a supervising attorney at the Disability Law Center of Utah. (The first section covers employment, the second part state and local government entities.)

“The vast majority of [private institutions] also probably take federal funding, because they have students who get loans and pay their tuition,” Crippes said. (Joyce, on its website, notes that it accepts loans through FAFSA.)

The ADA defines a service animal as a dog or a miniature horse, Crippes said. “It has to be trained to perform a task that helps with a disability,” he said. Service animals can only be asked to leave, he said, “if it is out of control.”

“The ADA has been around for 30-plus years, but there is still a lack of awareness about what it requires and how it works,” Crippes said.

Shuman, director of the Rocky Mountain ADA Center, said she can’t “see any reason” Joyce would be exempt from ADA provisions.

In academic settings, Shuman said, it’s up to individuals to contact the school or university, self-disclose their disability, and explain “things that they need put in place in order for them to have access to their education.”

But, it’s up to schools, she said, to work with the person with a disability, “and if necessary, make reasonable modifications to their policies, practices and procedures, in order to make sure that that person has the accommodations that they need.”The word “reasonable” is important. “They don’t have to do that if it causes a fundamental alteration to the operations of the organization, or if it causes some sort of undue financial or administrative burden,” Shuman said. “That’s always determined on a case-by-case basis.”

ADA law, Shuman said, is paradoxical because it’s meant to “level the playing field” for people with disabilities.

“It’s all about removing barriers for people with disabilities. The spirit of the law acknowledges that people with disabilities often have to work harder, just to have the same access to participate in everyday life as people without disabilities,” she said.

As ADA is practiced, though, people with disabilities constantly have to explain the law, Shuman said, and “take on the burden of educating everyone around them on their civil rights.”

Shuman said that 1-in-4 people in the United States has a disability, and 60% of people will acquire one as they age — so knowledge about the barriers the disability community faces is increasingly relevant to more people.

“People with disabilities have proven time and time again that they are totally capable of doing just about anything that people without disabilities can do, with the right accommodations and support in place,” Shuman said.

Can people with service dogs thrive in STEM settings?

Ramp-Adams, Thomson’s advocate, first connected with her in May 2020, and worked with her throughout her time at Joyce.

The two women have things in common, including an interest in the health care field — Ramp-Adams has a degree in biochemistry and neuroscience — and the fact that both rely on service dogs.

Ramp-Adams is founder and CEO of Empower Ability Consulting, a company that she said works with people, government agencies and academic institutions. “The reason I started the company was because of the obstacles I faced, so I have a very strong focus on people who are seeking a STEM education with service dogs,” she said.

Empower Ability Consulting has worked with the American Society for Microbiology, she said, helping the group write guidelines on how to accommodate service dog handlers in labs. The company has done similar work with the American Chemical Society, she said.

Working with those organizations, Ramp-Adams said, has shown her there’s a shift in making those industries more accessible and inclusive. Still, though, there are difficulties — and she called Thomson’s situation the “worst-case example” of what can happen.

STEM academics, Ramp-Adams said, are quite rigid by necessity — because of the safety protocols in labs. Often, she said, organizations like Joyce are hesitant to have an outside consultant like her come in, even if she’s an expert in her field.

Working with Joyce, Ramp-Adams said they found the school resistant in “trying to do any kind of reasonable accommodation or try and assist in any way.”

She added: “There was no empathy, no compassion. And beyond [that], they just trounced all her civil rights. Just a basic accommodation, like extended testing, they were not going to even budge on that.”

Ramp-Adams said she has never before encountered a case where, as Thomson claims, Joyce said Thomson could not enter the school’s buildings without her service dog.

Crippes called that “disability discrimination.” As an example, he said, “if a person who had a mobility impairment — say they utilize a walker or wheelchair occasionally, but didn’t need it at all times … I don’t think a business could be, like, ‘You can only come in here if you utilize the device you have.’ What they would be saying is: ‘You are required to meet our demands of how your disability works.’”

Advocating for herself

Ramp-Adams said it’s “absolutely” possible for people with service dogs to thrive in STEM settings, if they are allowed to advocate for themselves and their needs.

“A person knows how to manage their disability. If we listen to them, they can absolutely thrive in whatever they want to do,” she said. “We don’t know what a person with a disability has to bring to the table unless we let them sit there and unless we let them into the decision-making areas.”

Thomson said she’s never had the issues with getting accommodations that she had with Joyce.

“The big part about having accommodations,” Thomson said, “is that they’re there for you to use when you need them.”

As of early April 2024, a little over a year after Thomson was expelled, there has been little movement with her lawsuit.

“We pretty much asked if they wanted to settle again, they said no,” Thomson said. “We have been talking to them to see if I can fit for my LPN license. … So far, it looks like I might not qualify. I’m also requesting, like, transcripts and stuff from them, and they’re refusing.”

Thomson said she feels like she consistently tried to advocate for herself, but no one at Joyce was listening to her.

“I’ve had times where I’ve definitely had to go in and talk to and educate people, but the people I’ve talked to have always been willing to listen,” Thomson said. “Here, I just feel like they were just unwilling to listen.”

Editor’s note • This article discusses suicide. If you or people you know are at risk of self-harm, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for 24-hour support.

Weber County Sheriff’s Detective Dustin Stewart paced the stage at Roy High School auditorium Wednesday evening. Behind him, a presentation showed the warning signs of “sextortion,” a form of blackmail in which sexual information or images are used to extort money or favors.

Stewart pressed a button on his remote, advancing the presentation to the next slide. A recording of a 911 call played, and a woman’s screams pierced the auditorium.

The call was from the moments after Lauren Glass found her 15-year-old son had died by suicide. Officers discovered an extorter had threatened to circulate intimate images that the boy had shared but thought would stay private, Stewart said.

“I think it’s important that we hear that portion of that phone call,” Stewart said to about one hundred parents and community members. “Because it’s real life.”

Lauren and Brian Glass returned to the room shortly after the recording had stopped.

“My family’s goal in this process of sharing our son’s story is to help,” Brian Glass told the audience. “If we can get one family never to feel what we felt, never to have to go through this situation, ever, we’ve accomplished something out of this tragedy.”

Although the couple spoke from a distance to the auditorium crowd, the evening felt intimate as they shared their grief and listening parents held hands and cried with them.

Recently, there has been a significant rise in reported financial sextortion cases that involve teenage boys, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported on its website. In 2023, the center received 186,819 reports of “online enticement,” a category of criminal activity that includes sextortion.

The Glass’s story

On Jan. 7, the Glass’s son came in contact with an extorter posing as a teenage girl through a social discovery app called Wizz, according to screenshots of their text exchange shared by Stewart. The Salt Lake Tribune is not naming the boy, in part, because he was a minor.

The extorter immediately asked the boy if they could follow each other on Instagram, a tactic commonly used to gain access to a victim’s friends and family for leverage later on, the detective said.

The Glass’s son agreed. The extorter then suggested an exchange of photos, asking the boy to provide explicit images of himself, Stewart said. The boy did so during a video call on Snapchat, feeling that it was “safer” than other apps.

“Kids think that Snapchat is safe,” Stewart said. They think “stuff deletes. Stuff can’t be saved without you knowing, which is not the case.”

The extorter took screenshots from the video and compiled them into one image, which included the boy’s face, and texted it to him, Stewart said. “Listen to me, bro,” the text read, “Are you ready now to cooperate with me or I start sending it to everyone.” The extorter demanded $200 in exchange for not releasing the photo, Stewart said.

“My son was so devastated, not because of the money,” Brian Glass said. “It destroyed him, I just know it. I beg you, have the conversations with your kids. Let them know that it’s a mistake and it’s going to be OK if they do something like that.”

Extorters are often in other countries

The Weber County Sheriff’s Office receives at least one case every week involving the sextortion of a minor, Stewart said.

“There’s no sexual component for the extorter,” Stewart explained. “They’re only after one thing: they’re after money. They make that very clear. They don’t care what they get, as long as they get something of the kids’ that they can use against them for money.”

If they do get the money, the extortion “never ends,” Stewart said. If they don’t, extorters sometimes release photos, he said, but more often than not, they will just “move on.”

“They’re talking to a bunch of kids,” Stewart said. “They are doing this to make money for their family. They’re going to work, doing this, and then going home at the end of the day. It’s a job.”

Bringing criminals like these to justice is often difficult because the majority are located in developing nations, he said. Sometimes they can be extradited, and other times they can face charges in their own countries. Sometimes governments comply, sometimes they don’t, Stewart said.

Stewart said he can’t speak to the specifics of the Glass’s case because it is an open investigation, but said officers believe they have located the man responsible for the messages.

Signs to look out for

Lauren Glass described her son as kind, a basketball player and someone who always stood up for others. “He had struggles with himself where he had Tourette’s and ticks and ADHD,” she said. “There were plenty of times when he was bullied. But when it happened to other kids, he never stood for it. Ever.”

Lauren and Brian Glass said they hope that other parents will use their tragedy to educate themselves and foster open communication with their children. It’s important for children to have a trusted adult whom they feel safe confiding in about mistakes, the parents said.

Here are early warning signs that suggest someone is engaging in child sextortion, according to Stewart:

• Approaching a child on social media and immediately asking for “nudes,” or explicit images.
• Offering reciprocation (“I’ll show you, if you show me”).
• Intentionally moving their communications with the child from one online platform to another.
• Sending messages that appear to be written by someone who isn’t a native English speaker; grammar and word use is “off.”
• Pretending to work for a modeling agency to obtain sexual images of the child/

While the instinct upon learning a child has fallen victim to sextortion is to delete all messages and photos, Stewart said that doing so will impact law enforcement’s ability to stop the extorter. He suggested parents instead:

• Stop all communication immediately.
• Block the extorter but do not delete messages or photos.
• Report the extorter’s social media accounts on all platforms.
• Contact area law enforcement.
• Get help before deciding whether to pay money or comply with the extorter’s demands.

More information and resources about child sextortion can be found at: https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/sextortion

Immigration and the tussle over what states can and should do to respond are issues on voters’ minds ahead of the 2024 elections. The Salt Lake Tribune asked each of the candidates for governor what actions they would take as the Beehive State’s top executive and what they believe is the proper role for the state in a national issue.

Some of these answers have been edited for length, clarity and grammar.

Republican candidates

Gov. Spencer Cox

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

My immediate priority is to change the asylum system. We need to make it much harder to make an invalid claim and we need to process the claims much faster. The overwhelming majority of those crossing the southern border are now claiming asylum even though very few of those claims are ultimately successful. The dramatic increase in those asylum seekers arriving in Utah and across the nation is overwhelming our social services. On top of the asylum loophole, the influx of fentanyl, aided by a porous border and cartels that control border traffic, is killing thousands of people. I’ve communicated with my fellow governors consistently and forcefully to both President [Joe] Biden and Congress the nature of the crisis and that we need to secure the border and fix legal immigration. There is broad agreement on these two priorities and now it’s time to act.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

The U.S. Constitution is very clear that immigration is a federal issue, but states have had to step in because of the lack of action by Biden and Congress. We’re doing our part to strengthen border security by sending Utah National Guard members and state troopers to assist where needed. We’ve been working with sheriffs and law enforcement from across the state to force the federal government to take responsibility and deal with illegal immigrants who commit crimes. If the federal government won’t act, I’ll continue to push for strategies that protect states. On legal immigration, I would support the idea that Rep. Curtis proposed that would put states in the driver’s seat and not be so dependent on federal visa rules that were set long ago and don’t reflect our current economy.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

I am supportive of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his leadership on this critical issue. They are at their wits’ end and frustrated by the federal government’s failures. I am hopeful that Republicans are able to take back the U.S. Senate in the upcoming election and push forward nationwide legislation to curb illegal immigration rather than forcing individual states to pursue piecemeal legislation that is unable to get to the root of the problem.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

I continue to support the principles of the Utah Compact. As we fix legal immigration, we absolutely must change the incentives that have led to false claims of asylum. The warping of the asylum process is overwhelming our states and hurting those who truly are escaping persecution in their home country and now have to wait years for their claims to be adjudicated. There is nothing in the Utah Compact that says we can’t protect our border.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

As with broader immigration reform, Congress must enact legislation to resolve these issues rather than leaving it to the whims of whoever currently occupies the White House. Failure to do so is a dereliction of their duties.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

Utah never has been and never will be a sanctuary state. I will never bend on that.

Carson Jorgensen

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

After three years of uncontrolled, lawless open borders under the Biden Administration, my normal views on immigration are moot. I am not anti-immigration. However, the orchestrated debacle we have endured these past three years is not immigration, it is invasion.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

As governor, I would deploy every legal means available — and seek to expand those means — to halt all illegal immigration and begin the process of removing illegal aliens from the state of Utah, preferably by deportation.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

I do support the Texas legislation. When the federal government fails to fulfill its lawful obligations — and especially when that failure is intentional — I believe it is within the purview of the states to take actions necessary to remedy that failure. What’s more, I believe Utah should have immediately taken an active and supportive role in assisting Texas by all legal means, including personnel on the ground. I believe the future of federalism is states working together to resolve the federal government’s failures, breaches of faith, and overreaches.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

While I support principles of compassion and respect, in the circumstances that now confront Utah and other states, I cannot currently support the Utah Compact. As such, I cannot support the guest worker or driving privilege provisions.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

As to DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], again because of the generational harms and willful disregard for the law on the part of this administration, I cannot support any path to citizenship for those in our country illegally.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

As governor, Utah would first assess the damage done by the Biden border invasion and report it publicly. Unlike the current executive, I would identify and track how many migrants have entered Utah illegally and report it publicly. Absent an option to deport, I would follow the lead of other states in transporting as many illegal aliens as possible to so-called “sanctuary states” that have openly declared their willingness to accept and support them.

Phil Lyman

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

When it comes to immigration, I believe in a tolerable administration of the law. If the federal government does not protect the nation’s boundaries from illegal immigration, then it is the duty of the states to protect themselves. I would start with detaining noncitizens who are arrested and would disregard the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement regulations for those who have violated Utah laws.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

The state has an obligation to the citizens of Utah. The proper role would be to insist that the federal government remove noncitizens who are here illegally.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

Yes.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

I do not support the principles of the Compact. I do support legal immigration and legal guest workers in Utah. I voted in favor of the driver’s license for legal guest workers. Seeing how the census and the voting roles have failed to take the “legal” distinction into account, I would support repeal of the driver’s license provision.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

There is a path for these parents and children, but it means obtaining a legal working or living accommodation.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

County commissioners are elected to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of their counties. Sheriffs are elected by county citizens and charged with the same duty. Our Sheriffs are the people’s most respected elected officials. They do amazing work. They arrest and detain criminals, but if those criminals happen to be noncitizens, ICE requires they be released after 72 hours unless given permission by ICE to hold them longer. This is a federal rule more honored in the breach than in the observance. The Governor should let judges know that he expects them to hold criminals regardless of federal rules. If a state does not nullify unconstitutional or untenable federal laws that are detrimental to the citizens of the state, then the state is not a state at all but a vassal subunit of the federal government.

Sylvia Miera-Fisk

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

Laws on legal immigration must be enforced and our constitution must be upheld. Citizens of the country and of the state of Utah are always to be protected and sustained. That answer goes for the next point brought up.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

No response.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

Absolutely. Texas has a moral and legal duty to protect its citizens that honors and enforces the laws of this land and honors our constitution of the United States of America, always. Each state likewise has its individual needs in dealing with immigration. Legal immigration is a completely different issue than the crisis of illegal immigration facing our country today.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

Who and why was the Compact written and for what purpose? I know very little of this compact and those who support and signed it. I have no opinion until I can research it. Driver license and driving privileges have laws and rules in obtaining them, and instead of creating loopholes around laws, our legislature should be working on ways to enforce laws instead of ways around honoring them.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

The issue of the “Dreamers” is in the past. However, it revealed the need to reform the process of obtaining legal status and citizenship in similar situations. If there are still those in need of rectifying their status it needs to be resolved.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

Families, especially parents risking the safety of their families and possible separation by entering any country illegally, are solely the responsibility of those heads of family — i.e. the parents.

The United States of America is well within its rights to establish laws for citizenship and to enforce and honor our Constitution. As the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants who came to this country from Mexico legally, but more importantly as the descendant of the original citizens of this continent over 2,000 years ago, enforcing our laws is vital to the structure, safety and prosperity of the United States of America. By not doing so, we are at risk of losing our country, as happened upon establishing this new government from the original native Americans almost 250 years ago.

Come to this country, come to Utah, but come legally and honorably.

Scott Robbins

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

My priority with immigration is to the people of Utah — how immigration can benefit us. My other priority is to prevent and punish all future illegal immigration.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

President Biden and the Department of Homeland Security are supporting a full-on foreign invasion into our country. They are traitors to our people. Because of this, Utah must solve immigration for itself. We must put an end to illegal immigration. We must protect the lives of our families and people.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

Definitely. We need a permanent, lasting solution to illegal immigration. I am tired of reading another girl was raped by an illegal immigrant, or another Utahn was killed by an illegal immigrant, or another Utahn died from a fentanyl overdose. Housing is unaffordable, and over 100,000 illegal immigrants in Utah contribute to that. We have unhoused white, Black, and Latino Utahns, yet we prioritize illegal immigrants over them? It’s time to set things straight and fix this problem once and for all.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

I think most of the principles were good principles. Though, the compact left off one very important detail — the treatment of Utahns by foreigners. They also need to treat us with dignity and respect. Our people’s well-being comes first. That should have been top priority on the compact.

Utah should be in control of its own immigration since the Biden administration is only interested in replacing us to steal more votes. Our first priority needs to be to employ Americans. Only after should we seek to use foreigners. I think we can help some of the illegal immigrants who have grown up here with certain privileges, but we need to enforce immigration and have a cut-off date for any and all privileges to prevent future illegal immigration.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

I recognize some illegal immigrants have family members who are citizens. I think we can help them stay with their family. But going forward, we need to end all privileges to prevent any future illegal immigration and stop rewarding behavior we don’t want. Every time we show compassion, we are taken advantage of and our people suffer as a result. It is time to give priority and compassion to the American people.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

My priority and allegiance are to the people of this great state. We deserve to live in neighborhoods where we and our children are safe, where we and our children have affordable housing and can grow up in peace and prosperity.

Democratic nominee

Brian King

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

We are a nation of immigrants. Our state has a long history of welcoming and embracing those who come to Utah looking to build a better life, especially because that’s how many of our pioneer ancestors ended up here. We must properly balance fair and enforceable border policies with compassion and community so that our country and our state can continue to be a place where decent, hard-working people of all backgrounds can thrive.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

The constitution is clear: immigration policy falls outside of the jurisdiction of the governor of Utah. The federal government has the responsibility of managing immigration and the border.

Unfortunately, partisanship and gridlock have blocked any real immigration reform for decades. As governor, I would strongly advocate for Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration reform package that would ensure safety and security, while also creating a realistic and attainable pathway to legal immigration and citizenship. The State of Utah also has an important role to play in supporting refugees and asylum-seekers who flee dangerous situations and come here in search of the American dream.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

I do not support the recent Texas legislation, and, as governor, I would veto any similar legislation were it to pass here in Utah. It’s not only unconstitutional, but it’s just bad policy. It places the burden of enforcing federal immigration law on local law enforcement officers and judges who often lack the specialized training needed to do this work. Additionally, it adds more work for departments that often have limited resources to begin with.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

Yes, I strongly support the values and principles of the Utah Compact. It’s worth noting that the Utah Compact was reaffirmed in 2019 by many who originally signed it in 2011. Rather than continuing to be a culture war issue or a political football, immigration reform should be handled with the seriousness and deliberation it deserves. Any conversations about immigration should recognize our shared Utah values of community, respect, freedom, and opportunity. I also support any efforts in our state to ensure that immigrants who settle here can get gainful, meaningful work and build better lives for themselves and their families.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

I absolutely support a path to citizenship for “Dreamers.” This country is their home — they have families, careers, and businesses here. Our elected leaders should make it a priority to allow these hard-working folks to become American citizens and continue to contribute to the success of their communities.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

I believe that my view of immigration policy is in line with the majority of Utahns: I want to see Congress take real, bipartisan action to reform the immigration system, which has been used as a political prop for too long. Good immigration policies are not only in line with the basic principles of humanity, they are critically important for the economic growth of our country and state. I want to see a fair balance between security and fairness in our border policies. I also recognize that, as governor, my role would not be to create national immigration policy or fan the flames of culture wars, but rather to focus on how to best serve the needs of all Utahns.

Libertarian nominee

Rob Latham

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

Utahns may better enjoy the blessings of migration, along with improvements in boundary management technologies, by encouraging mutual aid societies and intentional communities to “underthrow” exploitative and regimented anti-migrant systems.

The State of Utah has already implemented practical measures at the margins, such as the Utah Pilot Sponsored Resident Immigrant Program, which resembles the invitation-sponsorship model advocated by libertarian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Still, that program traps participants within Utah’s borders without a permission slip from the Department of Public Safety. “Papers, please?” A freed market in labor can develop superior and incorruptible solutions. A sign of humanity’s continued flourishing will be when humans become stateless.

And just as antebellum jurors helped nullify the predations of slave patrols, Utahns serving on juries can curb efforts at mass detention and deportation.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

Before statehood, Mormon pioneers fled the United States to an area within what was then the Mexican territory of Alta California — and is what we now call “Utah.” The State of Utah never had nor will ever have a proper role with respect to immigration, regardless of who claims to be its governor. I affirm every individual’s right to move about voluntarily and unmolested in a non-trespassory way. I oppose the transfer of funds extorted from taxpayers to immigrants for “welfare” or “resettlement payments.”

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

Prudence counsels patience for a final decision on the ongoing judicial review of Texas’s Senate Bill 4 before considering similar legislation in Utah. Furthermore, the geographic separation between Utah and Texas disfavors making the federal government’s failure there a pressing need to wastefully expend funds extorted from taxpayers here.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

The Utah Compact on Immigration contains laudable language about families, a free-market economy, and a free society. The Compact fails by relying on the same federal government that created the problem — and will be $36 trillion in debt by year’s end — to fix (along with socialized, perversely-incentivized, under-resourced, understaffed, and increasingly Potemkinized law enforcement agencies) what is broken and inhumane by design.

I do not support guest worker legislation because I do not support any legislation infringing on our right to work unrestricted. We all have a right to work peacefully and honestly. Similarly, I do not support driving privilege cards because driving should not be a privilege for anyone who has the permission of the owners of properties, such as thoroughfares, to operate a vehicle thereon. Neither driving privilege cards nor a driver license make one a safe driver, but they can restrict movement by operating as an internal passport. Profit-minded thoroughfare owners will only make their highways available to accredited drivers, and wise motorists will travel only on thoroughfares so regulated.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

Pointing a ballot at a member of the political class will not change the channel, like some kind of electoral remote control, to a desired outcome. During a month-long study at an ashram, I learned about a swami who, believing that borders are only mental constructs to overcome, flew his “Peace Plane” over conflict zones in the early 1970s. Non-aggressive, direct actions will restore a world in which there are no passports, visas, or other papers required to cross borders before voting will.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

One of the key points of the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus, of which I have been a member, is “No Particular Order.” The point explains that “[t]he removal of one harmful government policy should never be held hostage for the removal of another, as this throws self-imposed barriers in the path of liberty and removes potential pressures for change. For example, saying that borders may be opened only after welfare is eliminated is unacceptable; the proper position is to push for both changes. Should we succeed in achieving open borders only to find that welfare burdens are increased, this should be used as an additional argument to abolish welfare.” I agree.

Unaffiliated candidate

Tom Tomeny

[Tomeny did not directly answer the questions. This is a portion of his reply.]

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

The natural limit on immigration to both the U.S. and Utah is financial.

As we close the public purse, there can be less taxes and more freedom, which is proven to produce both prosperity and high growth. Fortunately, a system of less taxes and more freedom is something that exports well, and, as we set an example here in Utah for the U.S. and the rest of the world, other areas can and will emulate us and their populations will tend to stay where they are when they live under new regimes with more freedom, which produces more prosperity.

A governor’s job is to put forth a vision that is worthy of the people who are governed. My vision is of a frugal government that allows private individuals and institutions to voluntarily care for their neighbors, even newly arrived ones.

The “problem” of immigration has been created by the opening of the public purse. When we close the public purse, we open the door to immigrants who are self-reliant and can become wonderful citizens.

Editor’s Note: Gov Spencer Cox’s campaign provided their responses after the initial publication of this story. Those responses have been added above.

Hurricane • It may have included “empowering local voices” in its title, but the House Natural Resources Subcommittee’s field hearing chaired by Utah Congressman John Curtis on Monday was noticeable for who was excluded.

Not a single Democrat from the congressional committee attended the hearing at the outdoor Rock Bowl at Sand Hollow Resort. None of the environmental or conservation groups in attendance were invited to speak. Nor did the committee, which was following its “Washington, D.C., format,” take public comment.

Curtis, the lone committee member — Republican or Democrat — at the hearing, said every committee member was invited, but added the fact none of them attended was a matter of personal choice and said that they could still submit written testimony.

Environmental groups in attendance also were free to submit written comments to the committee. As for the public, Curtis noted, they could fill out comment cards or talk with him or other Republicans after the hearing.

In condemning what they called federal overreach and mismanagement of the state’s public lands, Curtis and fellow Utah Reps. Celeste Maloy and Blake Moore spoke with one voice. So did their five witnesses: Washington County Commissioner Adam Snow, Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke, Utah Department of Transportation Executive Director Carlos Braceras, Washington County Water Conservancy District general manager Zach Renstrom and local developer Darcy Stewart.

Federal overreach on North Corridor Highway

Speakers were especially united in condemning the Biden administration for its handling of the proposed four-lane North Corridor Highway, which would cut through 4.5 miles of prime Mojave Desert tortoise habitat in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.

The right of way for the road was approved in January 2021 during the Trump administration, prompting a coalition of national and local environmental groups to sue the U.S. Department of Interior and the Bureau of Land Management for allegedly violating the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, among other federal laws.

Citing issues with the initial environmental impact statement, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman put that approval on hold last November while federal agencies take another look at the proposed highway and conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement that would build upon the original.

In 2009, Congress enacted the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which created the 45,000-acre Red Cliffs National Conservation Area in Washington County. The BLM was tasked to oversee the land and protect the area’s natural resources and desert tortoises.

Braceras said that the agreement authorized the construction of an east-west highway across the county and gave the BLM three years to create a travel management plan that included one or more alternatives to a northern corridor route. Witnesses said the BLM has failed to do either.

Maloy lauded Washington County for being a “poster child” for showing how to work with federal agencies in good faith to manage and maintain access to public lands. She blamed the BLM’s actions and the reversal on the North Corridor Highway on unelected bureaucrats. For his part, Commissioner Snow blamed shady backroom dealings between the Biden administration and “fringe environmental groups.”

Deep State trying to deep-six highway

“Pathetically, some fringe environmental groups weren’t happy with that cooperation and, unfortunately, it appears the deep state of unelected bureaucrats in D.C. will roll this back to score political points in an election year.” Snow said.

North Corridor Highway supporters argue the road is needed to ease traffic congestion in St. George. By the Dixie Metropolitan Planning Organization’s estimates, the highway would reduce traffic congestion in the area by up to 15%. Failure to build the highway, state and local officials have attested, will further tax the area’s transportation infrastructure and harm the economy.

Witnesses testified that failure to build the road also wouldn’t be great for tortoises. In 2021, Zone 6 was established on roughly 6,800-plus acres west of Bloomington and south of Sunbrook neighborhoods and added to the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve to offset the impact of the Northern Corridor. The land is separate from the rest of the reserve, which encompasses the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.

Roughly half of the zone is BLM land, and the remainder is SITLA land. Clarke said Zone 6 protects between 500 and 1,000 of the endangered tortoises, compared to about 40 to 50 that would be impacted by building the North Corridor Highway. Moreover, he added, it adds 12 acres of habitat for every acre that would be impacted by the highway.

If the Biden administration blocks the highway, Clarke and others warn, it would open up 3,400 acres in Zone 6 to development.

“It is mind-blowing that people are willing to sacrifice so much habitat in order to prevent a congressionally authorized road,” Clarke said.

While discussion of the Northern Corridor dominated the hearing, it was one of a litany of complaints voiced by participants at the hearing. Curtis noted that roughly 90% of Washington County is owned by the federal government, which means residents are severely impacted by burdensome federal regulations and red tape.

Curtis said that impacts are especially severe with respect to affordable housing.

“If the federal government were to free up … less than one-tenth of 1% [of its land holdings] for residential development, housing would become newly affordable for 4.7 million Americans,” he said, citing a 2022 study by the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee. “That would address 35% of Utah’s housing shortages.”

Curtis and Moore also took aim at the BLM’s new Public Lands Rule, which the agency implemented this month to restore balance on the nation’s public lands by protecting land health, establishing “restoration and mitigation leases” and clarifying protections for Areas of Critical Environmental Concern.

They argued the new rule would lock up grazing rights, limit mineral extraction and curtail recreational access to public lands. They further accused federal regulators of ignoring them and not giving them a voice in managing the state’s public lands.

Irony and hypocrisy

Unable to voice their opinion during the hearing, members of environmentalist and conservation groups had plenty to say after it concluded. They characterized the proceeding as a one-sided sham.

Conserve Southwest Utah Executive Director Holly Snow Canada noted the irony of participants complaining about not being heard by federal officials while excluding “local and indigenous” voices at the hearing. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance also took issue with how the hearing was conducted.

“Today’s partisan hearing was out of touch with local and national support for protecting public lands — especially the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area,” Travis Hammill, the Southern Utah Wilderness Association’s D.C. director, stated.

Conserve Southwest Utah officials said much of the testimony at the hearing was false. For example, they insist the 2009 Omnibus bill neither authorized a northern corridor road to be built nor required the BLM to designate a corridor in the Red Cliffs NCA. It only directs them to identify one or more alternatives to a northern transportation route in the county. In addition, they said, the 2021 Environmental Impact Statement found cheaper and more efficient alternatives to the North Corridor Highway.

Environmentalists further argued that half of Zone 6 is managed by the BLM and already protects desert tortoise and habitat as an area of critical concern and that SITLA can sell the remainder it owns to developers at any time. They dispute the contention that Zone 6 will lose its protections if the Northern Corridor is built.

“Holding the American public hostage by insisting they must allow a highway to be built through a congressionally mandated conservation area or else other tortoise habitat is on the chopping block, is [wrong],” said SUWA wild lands attorney Kya Marienfeld.

Equally ludicrous, Conserve Southwest Utah officials say, is Snow’s assertion that the “deep state” and “back-room deals with fringe environmentalist groups” are responsible for the BLM’s decisions concerning the Northern Corridor. They say the judge’s ruling and the supplemental environmental impact are the result of the mistakes federal agencies made in the original 2021 EIS.

Contrary to Clarke’s assertion that the highway would only impact 40 to 50 tortoises, environmentalists insist the road would negatively impact more than 350 adult tortoises in addition to juvenile tortoises. They maintain it also could spark more wildfires, which in 2020 devastated nearly 25% of tortoise habitat within Red Cliffs. Between 1999 and 2019, tortoise numbers in and surrounding the Red Cliffs NCA dropped 41%.

SUWA officials, in turn, blasted congressional officials’ criticism of the BLM’s public lands rule. “... The rule highlights what was always there: that conservation is an integral part of how the BLM tackles its work … Keeping conservation front and center is particularly important in places like Washington County and across Southwest Utah that are seeing both significant growth and the impacts of climate change such as prolonged drought and diminishing water supplies.”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

All kinds of believers and nonbelievers have described brushes with death in which they briefly left their bodies to see and feel otherworldly elements. While most scientists say these “near-death experiences” are the product of neurons firing in particular ways under particular stress, many who are religious view them as objective encounters, occurring in space and time.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seem particularly intrigued by the way such experiences affirm their teachings of the afterlife and have rushed to buy the many books on the topic, including Betty Eadie’s 1992 bestseller, “Embraced by the Light,” and, more recently, John Pontius’ “Visions of Glory: One Man’s Astonishing Account of the Last Days.”

While Eadie’s book tapped into New Age Mormonism popular in the 1980s and ‘90s, “Visions of Glory” — and the writings of Chad Daybell, a Latter-day Saint writer in Idaho who has been accused of murder — seems to draw on apocalyptic and political speculations.

On this week’s show., historian Matthew Bowman, director of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California and author of “The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America,” discusses this genre and its implications in Latter-day Saint culture.

Listen to the podcast :

Athena Tongaonevai

School: Bountiful

Grade: Senior

Sport: Softball

When it comes to helping her pitcher, Bountiful catcher Athena Tongaonevai knows all the things that can help keep opponents’ bats at bay — like setting a good target, keeping the ball in front of her.

These are standard defensive measures to help a pitcher get a win. But Tongaonevai these days is thinking of offensive ways, too, and believes her current mindset is one reason she’s started off the season with eight home runs.

“What’s motivating me this year is that I know my pitcher is working really hard. Whenever we get back on offense, how am I backing up my pitcher?” she said. “How am I contributing to this win?”

The Redhawks have raced out to a 15-2 record, 8-0 in district, and pushed their winning streak to 11 straight with a recent victory over Viewmont.

Tongaonevai leads the team with a .538 batting average, with 26 RBIs to go with her homers.

Her home run total is already three more than she had all of last season.

“That one year has just totally made a difference, added to my experience,” said Tongaonevai, who added that getting one year older has benefited the whole team as well. “We’re doing well. We didn’t have very many seniors last year, so we didn’t have to go back to square one.”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

During the height of the Pac-12 days, Utah and Washington waged war over California recruits. To the Utes staff, it felt like every time Huskies corners coaches Jimmy Lake or Keith Heyward got in front of a recruit, they’d steal a commitment.

“We battled for kid, after kid, after kid,” Utah cornerbacks coach Sharrieff Shah said.

Then, Shah had a breakthrough. He spotted a three-star corner named Sidney Jones out of West Covina, Calif. Shah got him on campus, sat him down in his office and Jones said, “Coach, I’m coming. I’m committing to Utah.”

Shah meticulously kept Jones away from Washington.

“I’m so fired up,” Shah recalled.

Then…

“He takes his trip to U-Dub, his official visit, and commits to U-Dub. Happens on the visit,” Shah said, shaking his head and laughing.

“I’m like Sidney, ‘What are you doing?’” Shah remembered almost pleading. “He goes, ‘Coach, I didn’t know I was going to love it.’ I’m like, ‘I did, that’s why I didn’t want you to go.’ ... Oh my, he about cut my heart out.”

Jones is now an NFL veteran — a second-round pick by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2017. The miss stuck with Shah. Not only because he loved Jones, but because any time an NFL player gets away, it lingers.

“I regret about six or seven kids that we didn’t go on [recruiting] that turned out to be NFL kids,” Utah running backs coach Quinton Ganther said. “It is a talent to evaluate talent.”

With the NFL draft this week, more scar tissue is about to be added for recruiters. These are the stories that already haunt Utah’s coaches.

Roman Wilson — Michigan, draft prospect

BYU wide receivers coach Fesi Sitake boarded a plane bound for Honolulu in 2018, thinking he was about to land a quarterback.

Jayden de Laura was a four-star prospect with offers from a few Power Five schools. He came from a football factory — the same high school as Marcus Mariota and Tua Tagovailoa. De Laura looked like an equally good prospect, winning a state title as a junior and the player of the year as a senior.

Behind him, there was an up-and-coming quarterback that BYU had its eyes on.

Sitake’s job was to put BYU in front on both recruiting paths.

But when he got there, he kept seeing a young receiver named Roman Wilson.

“When we saw Roman, we were like, ‘This guy can burn.’ He’s fast, we got on him,” Sitake said. “He was really skinny at the time. We got on with him early and had a great relationship.”

De Laura ended up going to Washington State. But Sitake was worried about Wilson. BYU invited him to campus. Before his junior season, Sitake offered him. It seemed like a risk. He didn’t have the stats to support it.

That changed quickly. By the end of his junior year, Oregon, Michigan and UCLA all came on board. BYU was out of the running and Sitake knew it.

“He started to blow up,” he said. “... You always think you are close to someone. I don’t know if Roman was truly considering BYU. I don’t know if Roman would have actually come. So my near-misses are more like, we were on them first. Developed a pretty good relationship.”

Wilson is now one of the best receiving prospects in this year’s draft. He won a national title at Michigan and logged 1,707 yards and 20 touchdowns as a Wolverine.

George Kittle — San Francisco 49ers

Weber State head coach Ron McBride had an ace in the hole, so to speak, when it came to Oklahoma recruiting.

If BYU’s problem was it couldn’t hang with the blue bloods, WSU’s issue was its cash-strapped recruiting operation. Weber didn’t have the resources to hop on planes and get recruits from all over the country.

But McBride hired one of his former players, Kamaal Ahmad, as a workaround. Ahmad was from Oklahoma and played for McBride at Kentucky. He had a knack for evaluating talent. So McBride would send him on a one-way ticket back to his home state and let him work for weeks at a time.

He’d drive his parents’ car. “He’d stay at his grandma’s house or stay at his dad’s house,” McBride said. “So we could recruit down there and it wouldn’t cost us a lot of money. ... Not having to pay for food, a car, lodging.”

For the first time, Weber State was getting recruits from outside the region with consistency.

In Oklahoma, Ahmad found George Kittle. He was playing in Norman, Okla. He had offers from Air Force and Navy. Weber got in on the action early.

But the staff quickly found out about Kittle’s connections to Iowa. His father won a Rose Bowl with the Hawkeyes and his mother was a Hall of Fame high school athlete. When Iowa eventually offered, Kittle signed and became one of the best tight ends of all time.

Still, the unique recruiting strategy of cutting costs helped. McBride did the same thing to recruit Hawaii.

“We hired the Kaufisis and different people that worked at the airlines. They can fly to Hawaii for free. And they could stay relatives there,” McBride said, chuckling.

They may have missed Kittle, but they punched above their weight class.

Trent McDuffie — Kansas City Chiefs

If the Sidney Jones’ recruiting war was a “stab in the neck” as Shah put it, the Trent McDuffie sweepstakes were even harder to swallow.

For a long time, the future Super Bowl champion was a Utah recruit. He was a slightly undersized out of St. John Bosco in California, but he was a dynamic kick returner with speed and strength.

Shah went out to California and met McDuffie’s father. The relationship grew so strong that McDuffie visited Utah on his own dime. Shah practically landed him.

“In my office, I had a great meeting with his dad. Loved this kid and he was saying, ‘Man, Coach, I could see myself at Utah,’” Shah remembered.

“He ended up going to Washington. And I’m like, ‘Wait what? How did that happen?”

Washington won another recruiting battle. Shah got another recruiting scar.

“You try not to get calloused over it and have the belief that, ‘Ah, it will be OK,” Shah said. “If this kid says he likes it, he really likes it. ... If he says he is committed, he really is. Maybe. I hope.

“But every recruiting class there’s somebody you love. You invest your time. And then it’s, ‘Coach, I just wanted to tell you …’”

Mykal Walker — Atlanta Falcons

Long after McBride left Weber and Jay Hill took over, WSU had another chance to land an NFL talent.

Then-running backs coach Quinton Ganther was in California scouting and saw an under-recruited inside linebacker.

Mykal Walker was coming out of Vacaville High School. He wasn’t ranked by 247Sports. But the measurables were there at 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds. Not to mention, Vacaville had molded NFL linebackers before. Zach Nash was drafted by the Cardinals in 2013.

Ganther came back to Ogden and pounded the table. Walker would come, he said, if they offered.

“We turned him down,” Ganther said. “It wasn’t my position, so I didn’t have the last say.”

Walker ended up going to Azusa Pacific. He recorded 40 tackles, a sack and an interception as a freshman. The next year he had 102 tackles and two picks. He transferred to Fresno State and was a fourth-rounder picked by the Falcons.

In Walker’s case, it was the staff that did Ganther in.

“A lot of times, guys want their guys. It’s just how it works,” he said.

Still ...

“That was a miss that kicks me in my a--,” Ganther lamented.

The Post District — a mixed-use development at the western edge of downtown Salt Lake City — is set to hold its grand opening on Thursday, May 2, and it’s already welcoming customers to the restaurant, brewery and coffee shop that have opened within its borders.

But a few restaurants and one bar are yet to come online.

Here is an update on the food and drink businesses that have already opened and are scheduled to open eventually in this high-end neighborhood, which is spread over nearly a full city block between 500 South and 600 South from 300 West to 400 West.

Urban Hill • 510 S. 300 West, Suite 100; 385-295-4200; Urban-Hill.com • This fine-dining restaurant, operated by the Park City proprietors of Hearth and Hill and Hill’s Kitchen, opened in 2022. Executive chef Nick Zocco was named as a regional finalist for 2024 in the esteemed James Beard awards earlier this month.

Level Crossing Brewing Company • 550 S. 300 West, Suite 100; 385-295-4090; LevelCrossingBrewing.com • The second location for this South Salt Lake-based brewery opened last summer.

Urban Sailor Coffee • 570 S. 300 West, Suite 100; UrbanSailorCoffee.com • Visit this outpost of the Sugar House-based specialty coffee shop in the leasing office for the Post District, and get a look at the motorcycle espresso bar that started it all.

Sunday’s Best • 550 S. 300 West, Suite 200; BrunchMeHard.com • The second location for the Sandy-based all-day brunch restaurant Sunday’s Best is still under construction, but is set to open sometime this year. In March, Sunday’s Best was approved by the Salt Lake City Planning Commission to put a bar called Sunday School on the second floor of the Post District location.

Mensho Ramen • 550 S. 300 West, Suite 101; Mensho.com • The first Utah location of this chain founded by Japanese ramen master Tomoharu Shono is under construction and is set to open sometime this year.

Dangerous Pretzel • 352 W. 600 South; DangerousPretzel.com • This eatery that will eventually serve soft pretzels and beer is under construction. A representative for the business said they hope to be open in the next two to three months and will announce an official opening date soon.

Cluck Truck • Instagram: @clucktruckutah • This Utah food truck specializing in fried chicken and fries has signed a lease to build their first physical location at the Post District.

Melancholy Wine & Cocktail Lounge • This new bar has signed a lease but other details are scarce. Signage is up on a building in the Post District.

Utah sportscasters are crowing about 41 brand new nights of professional hockey entertainment hosted by the Delta Center to add on top of the 41 existing nights of professional basketball entertainment based there. Yep, that’s exactly what we need to do to add to high school and college sports programming, recreational league sports programming and personal exercise and healthy living programming.

One can forgive single-minded sportscasters for not being able to even conceive why Smith Entertainment Group’s new fandom initiative may not be the social, educational and economic boon they say it will be for the “downtown core” or the citizenry at large. Sports is their job, their passion, their Golden Calf, the only thing they know much about.

But actual news anchors, church leaders, democracy-minded politicians, wise business leaders and academicians and economists might come to a different conclusion if they gave it more than a moment’s thought. Isn’t this just another way to transfer Utah working family income into the hands of a billionaire and draw folks away from the family food table to the restaurant table?

The project will require a huge amount of public tax dollars to be taken out of Utahns’ paychecks. It will take away from expenditure of discretionary time in adult continuing education, homework and school-based dance and drama nights for high schoolers, political organizing time for democracy, volunteer time for nonprofits, church social time and college education savings for youth.

Yep, that’s what we need to do in a time of crisis in our state and nation, bury our heads ever deeper in the sand.

Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross

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Animal agriculture is an environmental disaster. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 14.5% of all harmful greenhouse gas emissions is due to raising animals for food — a greater share than the amount contributed by all of our personal automobiles put together. The Great Salt Lake is disappearing because water is being diverted to grow alfalfa, a thirsty crop being grown in the desert. Alfalfa is produced only for animal feed.

Wild spaces throughout the U.S. and beyond are depopulated of indigenous species, especially predators, to transform the landscape to accommodate grazing livestock. Large-scale deforestation, particularly in regions like the Amazon rainforest, is similarly driven by the expansion of pastureland and cultivation of feed crops like soybeans for livestock.

Animal agriculture also threatens the globe with another deadly pandemic, due to the misuse of antibiotics as a growth promoter and the extreme overcrowding that exists on modern cruel factory farms.

Given this, I was surprised and disappointed to see that The Salt Lake Tribune highlighted only meat-serving restaurants in its recent “Earth Day” restaurant feature. Salt Lake City is home to many other wonderful all-vegan establishments, owned and managed by people who are trying to feed our community the best food while causing the least harm. This includes two restaurants I own and manage, Buds and Monkeywrench, which are proudly and forever vegan due to our ethical commitment to both the planet and the animals. I hope The Tribune will consider a follow-up piece that highlights some of our amazing vegan establishments in Salt Lake City.

This could also provide readers with important information about how animal agriculture causes profound harm and practical tips on how we can all help be part of the solution by choosing to eat vegan.

Roxy Carlson, Salt Lake City

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What are we to make of Zach Wilson now?

Can we get back to you on that?

The former BYU quarterback receives his second chance, as of this week, in Denver. Or is it his third or fourth chance? Or given the messed-over state of offensive affairs with the New York Jets, is this now his first real chance to be an NFL quarterback?

I really don’t know and maybe nobody knows, although many observers seem pretty convinced that the former BYU star has been nothing short of a bust, a waste of a No. 2 overall pick in the 2021 draft. And the conditions of Wilson’s trade to the Broncos confirm that.

Denver acquired the services of Wilson, along with a seventh-round draft pick, in exchange for a sixth-round pick. That’s how low the former Cougar has fallen. No. 2 overall for No. 203 overall. Man, it’s been a tough three years for Wilson, a time during which he was handed the starter’s job in New York, a job that was eventually taken away as the offense nosedived and the team flopped. Has beens and no names replaced him. A future Hall of Famer replaced him, then got hurt, sending Wilson back into the fire, but thereafter, he struggled more — with injuries, with lousy game-planning and play-calling, with a sieve of an offensive line, with exposed entitlement, with embarrassment, with the kind of general play that gets an NFL quarterback downgraded, disrespected and sent into a bin of other sorry pro QBs whose run — no, whose crash and burn — is better forgotten than remembered.

Some want to defend Wilson, including a number of his former teammates, while others, including a number of his former teammates, are glad to be done with the baby-faced prince who would have been king, but … no, he wouldn’t.

Not on Broadway.

It’s easy to blame the Jets for their track record of picking once-prized college quarterbacks and then ruining them. It’s what the Jets do. And it’s part of what they did with Wilson. A new head coach, an inexperienced offensive coordinator who was clueless, offensive personnel sent out to surround him that were a young quarterback’s nightmare. And the win-loss record and Wilson’s stats and passer ratings, as well as his overall persona on the field, are classic exhibits of a quarterback who was overwhelmed and just plain shook.

He looked the opposite of what he was and did at BYU, during the season that placed him on a rocket to ride, a season during which the Cougars mostly torched subpar competition. But Wilson gave the appearance that year of a seasoned signal-caller whose comfort zone and confidence could not be diminished or doubted. He was the man.

In New York, he was just a boy. A lost boy pretending to be something he wasn’t. There were occasional glimpses of his former glory, moments where arm talent and off-script savvy shined through. There were other times that must have been difficult for BYU fans to watch, times when Wilson’s confidence was shot, his abilities buried back at LaVell Edwards Stadium. If he could ever smooth the ride, he might yet be the quarterback optimists thought he was destined to be.

Again, even in hindsight it’s hard to tell what specifically ate him alive. Was it the bright lights of the Big Apple and the pressure that comes along with them? Was it the Jets’ organizational ineptitude? Was it his inability to drop back like a normal QB, set his feet and spin spirals to receivers who would actually catch them, without having to run for his life because nobody on the Jets knew how to delay defensive pressure? Was it simply because Wilson can’t play?

Well. Let’s say it this way: Folks who coach and evaluate talent around the NFL for a living, as mentioned, were hardly scurrying about for a chance to trade for Wilson, once it was made public that the Jets were allowing him to seek a trade. Other quarterbacks were acquired long before the Broncos gave up the little they did for Wilson. Did we make note that the Jets will pay half of the quarterback’s salary over the next season?

All of which writes out a disaster of a story for Zach Wilson. Or … it sets up the perfect tale of redemption. If he shows strong in Denver, sports a hungry and humble attitude, reaches out to his teammates, studies the schemes, utilizes his brain and his arm, both working diligently and settling in, he might just have a chance, one more chance to climb through the ruins of reclamation to prove he belongs.

The Broncos are short on quarterbacks, something they’ve been ever since Peyton left the place, and now they have Jarrett Stidham. There’s been talk that they might draft a quarterback in the days ahead, but with the 12th overall pick, team officials have said they have too many other needs to … what’s this, waste a pick on a QB who can’t help them?

If Wilson reshapes himself from waste to warrior in Denver, it will be the kind of narrative nobody will want to forget. If he demonstrates more of the same, his name and game will be what nobody will remember, whether they want to or not.

The Salt Lake City specialty coffee shop Urban Sailor Coffee is truly a family business — with five members of the same family working there.

Tyler Anderson and his son Archer co-founded the company. Archer’s older brother, Levi, is the head roaster, and their younger brothers, Canon and Burton, are baristas at the cafe’s locations at, respectively, 1327 E. 2100 South (across the street from Sugar House Park) and 570 S. 300 West (in the Post District).

Starting a coffee shop had been on Tyler Anderson’s mind as far back as about 2007, he said, when he created a Pinterest board full of ideas for a future cafe. And he’s had a passion for coffee even longer, as someone who would frequent coffee shops in his travels, he said.

But Tyler didn’t seriously consider starting a coffee shop until the pandemic, when Archer was furloughed from his job and moved back in with his dad. The two brainstormed ideas and came up with the plan to start a coffee business.

They wanted something mobile that could travel to events. Tyler had seen an espresso machine on a sidecar motorcycle in Portland, Oregon, and that inspired father and son to do something similar.

They bought a sidecar motorcycle and built it out, adding walnut countertops and a small handwashing sink, as required by the health department. The sidecar was filled with all of the pumps and water tanks they needed to make the mobile espresso setup work. Archer would ride the motorcycle to different locations, followed by a support vehicle, which would carry the espresso machine, grinder and other equipment.

“We launched it in May of 2021 with our first event, and it was pretty quickly a success,” Tyler Anderson said. “We got asked to do a whole bunch of other events that spring and summer.”

In 2021, Archer often rode the motorcycle coffee bar to Liberty Heights Fresh, where a lot of people discovered Urban Sailor Coffee, he said. The next year, they would frequent the Downtown Farmers Market. They even put the motorcycle on a trailer and towed it to serve concertgoers at a music festival in Montana.

Now, Urban Sailor Coffee employs 10 people beyond the Anderson family, and half of them have been there for more than two years.

‘Canada’s greatest stuntman’

Last year, Urban Sailor Coffee got their name out there in a big way, thanks to two videos they posted on Instagram.

In 2022, Urban Sailor Coffee was invited to serve coffee from their motorcycle espresso bar in Moab. That’s where AMC’s motorcycle-centric TV show “Ride With Norman Reedus” was filming the premiere of its sixth season, with the host, Reedus (one of the stars of “The Walking Dead”), and fellow actor Keanu Reeves.

In the red-rock desert, Archer and Tyler Anderson had a surprise for Reeves. Along with their espresso machine, they brought a replica of the Canadian motorcycle-riding Duke Caboom toy, based on the character Reeves voiced in the movie “Toy Story 4.”

Reeves’ reaction to seeing the toy on the coffee cart is priceless: He excitedly picks up the toy and, after making Duke do a backflip, he turns to face the camera and says (in the character’s voice): “Canada’s greatest stuntman, Duke Caboom.”

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A friend got the whole exchange on video, as well as a moment where Reeves holds up his cup of coffee and says “Urban Sailor Coffee” before tapping it against Norman Reedus’ cup.

When the episode of “Ride With Norman Reedus” came out in 2023 and Urban Sailor Coffee was finally allowed to post the videos, both went viral. The video with the Duke Caboom toy got about 5.5 million plays and almost half a million likes on Instagram, Tyler Anderson said.

In the caption for the Reedus video — which has been played just under 2 million times and is still getting views — Urban Sailor Coffee wrote, “This has become the absolute highlight of the year for our humble coffee business!”

Visitors to Urban Sailor Coffee’s Sugar House location can see the Duke Caboom toy that Reeves played with — and later signed — on a shelf behind the register.

Creating a ‘gathering spot’

Urban Sailor Coffee’s Sugar House cafe, which has been open since December 2021, is an inviting haunt that’s perfect for enjoying some coffee and a treat on a rainy day.

In his neighborhood above Westminster University, Tyler Anderson said, “I just felt like there wasn’t what I was looking for in a coffee shop close to me,” so he and his son Archer created one.

Tyler Anderson said he purposefully chose a location without a drive-thru, even though so many coffee places have them.

“Whether it’s Dutch Bros or a Starbucks, they’ve kind of gotten away from some of their sit-down coffee shops and put up a lot more just drive-thru coffee shops, and just trying to pump through more drinks,” he said. “I really wanted to get back to more of a traditional sit-down coffee shop, where it was kind of a gathering spot for the neighborhood.”

The walls, painted dark green, contrast coolly against the warm leather couches and chairs, as well as the wood of the bar and tables. The south side of the cafe is made up of windows, so natural light streams in.

Anderson said he wanted the cafe to have a vibe that’s “moody” but “cozy,” with ceramic cups and good-tasting coffee. “It was like trying to create that experience where I could approach more of the connoisseurs of coffee that appreciate that kind of stuff,” while still being accessible, he said.

In mid-2022, Urban Sailor Coffee bought a roastery, and now they roast all their coffee out of the back of Mountain West Cider in Salt Lake City’s Marmalade neighborhood.

Roasting is where Levi Anderson gets to showcase his talents, Tyler Anderson said. “He’s a very analytical person. And he gets into all the roast profiles, and it’s very data driven,” Tyler said.

The two of them roast together, and as they work, Tyler tastes everything, fine-tuning the flavors. “We’ve landed on some blends that people really seem to love,” he said.

In addition to ordering Urban Sailor Coffee’s single-origin coffees and blends from UrbanSailorCoffee.com, customers can now also find their coffee at Liberty Heights Fresh.

Urban Sailor Coffee opened their second cafe in the Post District in 2023. Sharing space with the leasing office, the Post District location is where Urban Sailor Coffee’s motorcycle espresso bar is parked when it’s not being taken to events.

Tyler Anderson said the community that has formed around Urban Sailor Coffee is “not something I thought was going to be important to me, but it’s become more important to me than probably anything.”

In the beginning, it was all about the coffee, he said. But now, “my passion now is shifting to the fact that I’ve been able to do this with my four sons and spend a whole lot of quality time with them.”

This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab. [Subscribe to our newsletter here.]

Childhood poverty rates improved overall in Utah between 2021 and 2022, based on the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

But in a handful of Utah’s school districts, the number of kids living in households making less than the poverty threshold increased by double-digit percentages.

Two school districts — one with an estimated decrease in childhood poverty, and another with an estimated increase — said they use different data to track how many children are economically disadvantaged.

Those data are based on the federal poverty level, instead of the poverty threshold, and also often depend on people applying for such programs as free and reduced-price lunch.

Alpine School District added they don’t typically analyze what’s causing changes in income levels, but instead focus on providing “the very best educational experiences available.”

Poverty spiked in six districts, mostly in rural parts of Utah

The childhood poverty rate in Utah decreased by 0.3% between 2021 and 2022, according to data from the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Program.

That program uses poverty thresholds to provide estimates of income and poverty for the administration of federal programs and the allocation of federal funds to local jurisdictions.

Between 2021 and 2022, the number of children aged 5 to 17 living in households experiencing poverty also decreased by about 2%.

That wasn’t true for every district, though. The childhood poverty rate increased in 21 of 41 districts, though mostly by less than 5%.

Within the boundaries of six districts — Box Elder and Davis in northern Utah; North Sanpete, South Sanpete and Wayne in central Utah; and Washington County in St. George — the number of school-aged children living in poverty and the poverty rate both jumped at least 10%.

In three of those districts, it jumped more than 30%.

Other districts saw major improvement, including Grand County and Kane County in southern Utah; Morgan in the north; North Summit, east of the Wasatch Mountains; and Tintic in the central part of the state.

San Juan School District, in southeast Utah, still has the worst poverty rate at 27% but improved from 2021 to 2022.

Some school districts — such as Beaver School District, in southwest Utah, and Uintah School District, in the northeast part of the state — had fewer children living in poverty within their boundaries, but have an increased rate because fewer school-age kids live there.

Lunch program, homelessness data show different trends

Yet school districts track numbers differently.

They primarily collect data on families’ income through the National School Lunch Program application process, said Rich Stowell, spokesperson for Alpine School District.

That program uses the federal poverty level (FPL) as a base, with students qualifying for free lunch if household income is 130% of the FPL, and a reduced-priced lunch if it’s 185%.

The federal poverty level and poverty threshold can vary by hundreds of dollars or more a year.

For the 2022 poverty estimates, the official Census Bureau poverty threshold for a family of four with two related children under age 18 was $29,678, compared with $30,000 set by the 2023 federal poverty guidelines.

Census Bureau numbers also are based on where a child lives, not where they go to school.

That can lead to some widely varied data on childhood poverty.

For example, about 15,000 Alpine School District students were considered “economically disadvantaged” in 2021, and that increased to more than 17,000 in 2022 before coming back down to about 15,000 in 2023.

But Census Bureau estimates indicate about 5,276 school-age children within Alpine School District’s boundaries lived in poverty in 2021, and that number decreased to 4,673 in 2022.

Steven Dunham, spokesperson for Washington School District in St. George, nodded to a potential flaw in the data related to the lunch program.

The district’s rate of students on free and reduced-rate lunch decreased despite Census Bureau data indicating the rate of childhood poverty decreased.

Yet the lunch program is dependent on families applying. The decrease could reflect “the difficulty of getting parents to fill out the free and reduced form after two years of not having to,” Dunham said.

Dunham provided other data that indicates the number of Washington School District students experiencing homelessness is increasing.

The final-day count decreased from 617 in 2021 to 595 in 2022. It then increased to 762 last year, which is close to the increase in the Census Bureau’s poverty estimate.

The district’s unhoused county was at 884 as of late March.

Where to get help

While Census Bureau poverty thresholds help dictate how the federal government doles out money, families don’t have to make less than those levels to qualify for help.

Utah has several child nutrition programs, including free and reduced-rate lunch.

The Teen Center Project provides food and other essentials, like showers and laundry, and is working to expand statewide.

The federal government maintains a list of other programs in Utah that help with everything from child care to energy costs to nutrition.

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.

Visitors have used motorized vehicles to experience the red rocks of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area since it was established. But that mobility has a cost, according to environmentalists, to the landscape itself.

Thanks to a recent settlement, the National Park Service must now revise its rules for off-road vehicles to restrict them within the protected area.

In 2021, the NPS published a rule expanding off-road vehicle use throughout the national recreation area. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and the National Parks Conservation Association, both environmental nonprofits, sued the agency over the rule.

The nonprofits argued that off-road vehicles caused water pollution, soil erosion, wildlife disturbances, habitat destruction and conflicts between motorized and nonmotorized recreators. The 2021 rule, according to the nonprofits, threatened to “degrade and permanently damage the wild lands within Glen Canyon.”

On April 10, the National Park Service reached a settlement with the nonprofits. The revised final rule will restrict motorized use on Lake Powell’s shorelines and prohibit off-road vehicle use in a portion of the Orange Cliffs Special Management Unit. The settlement does not impact recreation on Lake Powell.

“We hope that this new final rule will result in a better balance between off-road vehicle use and the opportunities to seek solace and primitive recreation,” said Hanna Larsen, a staff attorney for the SUWA. “Having a better balance of these different types of recreation better suits the purpose of the recreation area.”

Some off-road vehicle users find the settlement terms unfair. “Glen Canyon is a national recreation area,” said Ben Burr, executive director for the BlueRibbon Coalition, an off-roading and recreation advocacy nonprofit. “It should be managed for recreation.”

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area spans 1.25 million acres in northern Arizona and southeastern Utah. About 13% of that acreage is covered by Lake Powell, but as the reservoir shrinks due to climate change, more land emerges.

Environmentalists have voiced concerns that Lake Powell’s expanding shorelines would become play areas for off-road vehicles. The revised rule will respond by setting specific elevations at which shorelines are open or closed to motorized use.

The revised rule also will clarify that off-road vehicles can only be used to travel to a shoreline and back, like for putting watercraft in the lake, in shoreline areas. One exception is in the Lone Rock Beach Play Area, which is designated for off-road vehicle use.

The nonprofits also took issue with a provision in the 2021 rule that allowed off-road vehicles in the Orange Cliffs Special Management Unit, which borders Canyonlands National Park.

The settlement requires the NPS to prohibit off-road vehicle use on an 8-mile portion of the Poison Springs Loop within the Orange Cliffs.

“That’s a highly valuable route that is already used by all kinds of motorized users,” Burr said. “As long as they’re following the rules and there aren’t abundant instances of negative impacts, I think they should still be open for use. That’s what we’ll be advocating for.”

The NPS must publish the revised rule no later than Jan. 10, 2025. There will be a 60-day public comment period before the revised rule is finalized.

Some knew Melissa Inouye through her groundbreaking scholarship on the global history of Christianity. Some discovered her through her deeply personal books and sermons on finding God amid the hard stuff of life. Still others (“mostly people in their 70s and 80s,” she joked) learned of the historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from her regular appearances on the weekly program “Come Follow Up,” where she brightly offered deeply thought analysis heavy on analogy.

Inouye died Tuesday of cancer at age 44. Five days before, The Salt Lake Tribune spoke with her about hope, faith and one of her personal heroes, the late Latter-day Saint leader Chieko Okazaki. This conversation, which Inouye asked to be held until after her death, has been edited for length and clarity.

What is Mormonism? What is the core message?

Probably the weekly ward [congregational] meetings and activities, people getting together to spend time together in the context of their covenants to follow Christ.

Are there any parts or teachings that have become more important to you as you get closer to death?

You would think that some things, some teachings, would kind of come out and become more and more solid. But, actually, I think for me, it’s gotten me closer and closer to an understanding of what we don’t know. For example, the afterlife, the politics of sealings and the numbers that we use. Are we sure there’s only three places where people go? The politics of who can do what, who can be sealed, blah, blah, blah. I think many times, actually, the truth is we don’t really understand a lot about that.

I have a rock-solid testimony of the local Mormon ward. We’ve just gotten so much help and support from a variety of people with different capacities, and we have to come together to help.

I remember during the pandemic, especially the early pandemic, we had just been in our ward for a few months, so I didn’t know people that well. And I remember looking with resentment at the ward organist. She was up there without a mask, spewing COVID into the air. And I thought that she was probably someone I didn’t want to get to know.

Then I had a really bad weekend and during the course of it I started to sing to myself [the Latter-day Saint hymn that goes], “Now let us rejoice in the day of salvation. No longer as strangers on earth need we roam.” This was originally written by the Saints, and when they’re saying, “all that was promised, the Saints will be given,” they were saying that because so many things had been promised and they hadn’t seen them yet, but they sang “now let us rejoice” anyway.

So that was one of my songs I would sing to myself to cheer myself up on this really sad weekend. The next day it was a Sunday morning. And we walked in and the organist was playing, “Now Let Us Rejoice.”

It just made me feel a little seen by God. And then it turns out she became one of the absolute champions of my family during my illness. She was actually just here this morning. Such a beautiful thing about Mormonism is that it creates these really strong communities where people take liberties with each other because they assume a kinship, which one doesn’t normally assume in secular society. And because you just spend so much time with people — these mutual, entangling interactions that help you get to know people and support them in different ways.

What message would you like to leave with Latter-day Saints who are struggling?

Lots of people have come to me confused. They’re in the middle of a faith crisis, or faith transition, and they’re trying to reconcile what they’ve grown up thinking and what they see, and they perceive a disconnect. They want to keep on being the kinds of people they were taught to be and still stay in an institution that’s imperfect.

I never tell people they should leave or stay. That’s a pretty personal decision, but I think so often we overlook the things that actually make us really cool.

Say you went through a faith crisis and you lose trust in the institution and this long-standing pride you had in being part of Christ’s one true church. But that’s not what I would say is the most beautiful and life-giving thing about Mormonism. I would say it’s about the relationships we have with people who are different from us, relationships that are involuntary and sometimes even forced.

If you really believe that people are children of God and that there is a God who loves us, then, in some ways, being in a flawed, local Latter-day Saint institution is the best possible way to know God.

In so many ways in 21st-century life, we have isolated ourselves from our brothers and sisters, depending on our own individualistic and ideological preferences. I don’t think the point of life is to have individualism and ideology. I think the point of life is to do good, to serve and to learn how it feels to love and be loved on a scale that’s larger than yourself. And I have found that many times within a Latter-day Saint context. And I think that’s a really precious thing.

When people are struggling, it’s still hard because our experiences are so local. We could have a local leader who doesn’t understand where someone’s coming from, and that can really change things. But I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced Mormonism in many different places and contexts, and the common denominator I find is the beauty of those communities.

What is your wildest dream for Mormonism?

We have huge potential to change the world because of the financial resources, and, connected to that, the global logistical and administrative networks that we have. And, connected to that, the local, on-the-ground manpower and womenpower that we have.

We could do so much good if [the women’s organization] Relief Society, for example, were in charge of distributing our humanitarian aid and could coordinate those local projects in their areas. Or if, for example, to preserve some sort of complementarian difference but to make sure that women had significant power, if men were in charge of like the sacerdotal priesthood — you know, call the men for the ordinances type things — and women were in charge of the finances, then we would have a true kind of codependent relationship.

If you wanted money for the upcoming Young Men’s camp trip, you would go to the Relief Society president and she would check the books. And if you needed someone baptized, you would go to elders.

It would be a kind of mutual dependency that would engender respect. Right now that kind of balance does not exist in Mormonism because it’s a very patriarchal system — not only in its theology but also in its cultural and corporate practices. If you look at the 25 departments of the church, only the human resources head is female. In a culture like that, it’s just not possible to have normal, respectful relationships between men and women.

The Church History Department is so awesome because it has its own subculture created by people who have gone abroad and studied at other universities and who’ve learned about how other major systems can affect human relationships around the world — people who know that problems in the past are not so scary, know that history shakes out in a way that is often very contingent and isn’t inevitable. And you put all those things together and you get a department where I think the working relationships between men and women are very good.

In most of the other departments of the church, there’s a much more paternalistic culture of condescension, a culture of not listening to women. I have a colleague, whom I won’t name, who worked in the normal world before coming to the church. She has a Ph.D. and she’s just been shocked by how she’s been treated since coming to work for the church corporation.

A lot of it comes down to a kind of lazy fallback on an exclusivist excuse, which is, well, “We’re the one true church. We’re Jesus’ church. So we’re the best.” But I don’t think that’s how Jesus likes to have his participation and support of the church invoked, as a way to to stop un-Christlike and disrespectful behaviors.

And again, let me emphasize, this is not in my department. They’re really cool.

What could we do better as a faith community?

People have to work harder to preserve the words of dead Mormon women.

There’s this built-in preservation going on when you have male apostles who serve for life. If someone has been in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency for like, 40 years, everyone knows that person’s name. They know their voice. They know what kinds of jokes they tell.

But the structure means that we don’t have that same intimacy, familiarity or longevity for female leaders. It’s not like women haven’t been saying impressive, helpful, spiritual things for years. It’s just that different women have been saying it. And so people forget.

[Former Relief Society counselor] Sharon Eubank, for example, is one of the most eloquent speakers we have with so much real-world experience with Christian discipleship. We have to make sure that her wisdom doesn’t just expire. So I make it a policy that in each one of my talks I give, I quote Sharon Eubank at least once, and I quote [former Relief Society counselor] Chieko Okazaki at least once.

If you read Chieko Okazaki’s books, they are so prescient. They are so relevant. She’s like a prophetess. She’s just a beautiful teacher and speaker. It’s such a shame that, because of the particular patriarchal administrative structures of our church, they are forgotten.

And then you have an ironic situation in which you have a church that insists in the political/cultural sphere that it’s important for children to have a father and a mother, how they are entitled to the different things a father and a mother bring. And yet essentially the church [members] are raised by men only in terms of spiritual nourishment and in reference to God. We have Heavenly Father-ized God when our own doctrine is that God is a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.

If we want our own rhetoric to hold up that children are entitled to the different kinds of parenting and teaching that different kinds of people bring, we need to find ways to preserve and perpetuate women’s voices and the respect for our Mother in Heaven.

Also, this is kind of silly, but after [the Latter-day Saint historian and scholar] Kate Holbrook died, I made up a formula. And that is: If someone dies at the ages of 60 and up, it’s OK to just go to their funeral and say what great people they are. If someone dies between the ages of 35 and 60, however, it’s not enough to just memorialize them. It’s everyone’s job to perpetuate those people’s work since they didn’t have time to finish it.

Which is very self-serving, of course, but I did come up with it when it was Kate and not me.

What do you feel like your most meaningful contribution has been to the faith community as a scholar, as a writer, as a person?

I’ve helped to push work on Mormon studies outside of North America.

In 2017, I founded the Global Mormon Studies research network. Before then, you would have all these Mormon History Association panels that were about Joseph Smith, Missouri wars and the Book of Mormon translation. These standard sort of American-y things. And then you would have one panel and it had, like, Saints in Thailand, Saints in Turkey, Saints in Taiwan — and were mashed together and there’s nothing really holding them together thematically except for the fact that they weren’t about the United States.

The Global Mormon Studies research network is trying to expand that. And if you look at the programs at places like MHA now, you’ll see much more international diversity. That was obviously not just like me single-handedly bringing scholars into being. There were already a lot more scholars recently who have language skills and background in regions and cultures who are able to apply that to the study of Mormonism.

And the second thing is that — as is really common in any old boy’s network, which the church tends to be because of its patriarchal structure, and also the related institutions — people tapped people they knew. There was no way for someone younger coming in to make themselves known. So you ended up with the same people over and over again.

One of the things the research had was a website where you could put up a profile and announce yourself and the work you were doing and what institution you were at. That was a much more egalitarian, inclusive approach to scholarship. So now if you’re organizing a conference on a certain topic or region, you can go to that database.

This May they’re going to be holding a Global Mormon Studies conference in Mexico. The one before that was in Coventry, England. And the one before that was in Bordeaux, France. And just because they have been in different places, they’ve brought in different people.

Mexico is going to be really cool because it’s going to break the hegemonic barrier of the English language. It’s going to have papers in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

I’m really proud of Michelle Graabek, who is the new head of the organization, and of the Church History Department’s outreach, which has been really enthusiastic in supporting the conference. It will be a really groundbreaking conference especially because it will involve a number of scholars from Mexico who wouldn’t be able to fly to the United States for a conference held all in English.

That’s an academic contribution, but it also crosses over as we’ve seen to the Church History Department. Now people are thinking about Mormon studies in ways that are more inclusive and more global to reflect what is actually happening as opposed to who tends to get seen and heard the most.

I’ve been working in the Church History Department on projects like global history, where we’re trying to elevate the voices of global Latter-day Saints. There’s the global church history competition, which is currently a pilot underway in four different areas. It’s also an attempt to bring attention to the work of local historians.

I went on a kind of a listening tour of the church history specialists in Europe and the Swiss church history specialist looked at me and said, “How would you Americans like it if we Swiss wrote up your history and just gave it to you?”

Ever since then, we’ve tried to find ways not only to have more local sources but also to collaborate with local historians so that they will feel empowered and connected to the larger organizations in writing their own histories.

Why is that important? What do we learn about Mormonism when those histories are written by the people themselves and include more local voices?

It’s like for years we’ve been writing books about birds that were only about penguins. But there’s a lot more to birds than penguins.

What gives you hope?

[Brigham Young University professor] George Handley gave this presentation where he showed us some of the many different beetles in the world. I was very impressed. The natural world is fragile in some ways, but has also proven itself to be so resilient in many other ways. Like when you go into the mountains and leave behind civilization and you sit on the rocks that have been sitting there for millions or, you know, hundreds of thousands of years. They’re just rocks. They’re really impressive, though. They were created by a Mother and Father creator-God, who also created humanity. It’s pretty impressive.

I am an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who has worn the garment for the past 15 years. I am also a millennial woman who recognizes and has experienced the diverse needs of womanhood, and I would like to see more opportunities for women’s voices to be heard and represented in the church.

As I have followed the conversation surrounding garments, I’ve tried to step back and analyze what is driving the deeply held, valid beliefs of multiple sides. One thought I keep coming back to is that we are dealing with a symbol, and symbols are by nature layered, unique and complex; just as unique and complex as the people who interpret them.

When we consider the temple garment, it’s important to consider the many layers of this symbol. There is a doctrinal definition of what the garment represents — the Atonement of Christ. There are also historical, social and individual layers of symbolism for the garment. It’s the convergence of these layers and weight given to them by each individual that ultimately creates the cumulative symbolic meaning for any one person.

The social symbolism of garments weighs heavily on millennials and younger members. This symbolism originated in part in our formative years when modesty was pushed via specific guidelines in the “For the Strength of Youth” pamphlets, with garments held up as the gold standard. During this crucial time, millennials experienced intense social scrutiny over clothing standards rigidly tied to our personal worth and testimonies. Many devout young women sadly also internalized the message, “My body is bad, and I have to cover it.” Modesty was such a focus during these developmental years, with garments so intricately wrapped up in the dialogue, that some symbolism of garments was defined before most of us even entered the temple to learn differently. Garments have accumulated several messages through the years, and as a result, today symbolize control, shame and social judgment to many. Millennials are not only trying to rewrite this traumatizing messaging, but based on sad personal experience, they also are averse to any philosophy that ties judging a person’s worth to their appearance.

In this April’s General Conference, Relief Society counselor J. Anette Dennis defined the doctrinal symbolism of the garment in the most specific and complete way I have ever heard described outside of the temple. But talking openly about this information is new, and while we are grateful to assimilate it, one cannot simply erase the complex connotations decades of institutional and social programming have attributed to the sacred garment. Many millennial women crave a nuanced approach to the garment that allows us bodily autonomy and a less hyper-critical, appearance-based culture. We want our testimonies to be defined by our hearts, not our hemlines.

Other challenges women face with the garment include the physical health-related challenges. These are almost too diverse to list here, ranging from urinary tract and yeast infections to period, pregnancy, afterbirth, nursing and menopause needs, to sensory, skin and allergy needs, and everything in between. It is almost asking too much of one article of clothing to comprehensively serve a being as complex and extraordinary as a woman. If we are to ask such a thing, we must do so respectfully and reasonably; each ask contributes to a woman’s personal relationship with the garment as a symbol.

A woman’s relationship with her body is personal, tender and always evolving. Yet, when we consider the courage and humility with which she meets life’s varied demands, it is hard to find a better living example of our temple covenants such as the laws of sacrifice, obedience and consecration, than a woman devoting her body and soul to the creation and well-being of others. Her many sacrifices and how they exemplify commitment to covenants throughout life should be considered respectfully when discussing how clothing, including the garment, meets her needs.

Symbols are a powerful and beautiful teaching tool. We must, however, use them wisely with full consideration of all of their aspects and levels. The garment is doctrinally meant to symbolize the Atonement of Christ, an infinite act applied uniquely to each individual. Drawing on this definition, the relationship between the garment and its wearer may also be as individual and complex as each child of God, and should in itself be treated with utmost respect.

As I have pondered on the full range of the symbolism of the garment, my appreciation for it has grown. I hope that we, as individuals and as a church, can continue to progress in our understanding and use of the powerful symbol of the sacred garment.

Annie Mangelson is a published writer and photographer with a degree in English teaching from Brigham Young University. She spends most of her time caring for her small family, and advocating for individuals with unique needs, including her daughter, Lydia, who was born with Down syndrome.

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.

Residents evacuated for hours while officials conducted detonations of old dynamite found in a Holladay home overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning.

Around 4:30 a.m., bomb techs blasted the explosives found in a home near 6200 South and 2300 East, which could be heard and seen from miles away.

“Early this morning our bomb techs were able to detonate both explosive packages that were found at the structure,” explained Assistant Chief Dustin Dern with the Unified Fire Department. “Nobody was hurt, that went as well as could be expected.”

After the second explosion, flames and smoke could be seen billowing into the air.

“There was a fire resulting from that explosion, we had crews staged and ready to respond and they’ve contained that fire and there’s no fire damage to surrounding structures,” Chief Dern said.

Read the full story at fox13now.org.

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

Despite pressure from some in the community, the Iron County School District will not resurrect the “Redmen” mascot deemed racist five years ago, and instead focus resources on improving the county’s schools.

Last month, the school board moved to put the question before voters later this year by including it on an election-year ballot. But the attorney for the district and the county said the school board doesn’t have the authority to do that, sending the board back to the drawing board.

A proposal was brought forward for the district to stage its own county-wide straw vote — including allowing students to vote — for whether to revert back to the “Redmen,” rather than the current mascot, the “Reds.”

But in a 4-3 vote Tuesday night, the board voted to keep the current “Reds” mascot.

“I just can’t, in good conscience, with everyone going against it, with the potential that even one child could be insulted, hurt, bullied by any means by reinstating this name, I can’t. I can’t do it,” said board member Megen Ralphs.

The decision seems to put to rest, at least for the time being, a disagreement that board members agreed had divided the community and pained those in the Native American community.

In 2019, a committee of students, staff and alumni formed to debate the issue voted 17-7 in favor of the change because of the racist underpinnings.

Since then, though, a new school board has been elected and the members say the decision has split the community and that restoring the mascot is the single issue they hear about from voters.

At a meeting last month, public opinion was relatively divided between those who supported restoring the mascot and those who viewed it as a racist slur.

On Tuesday, however, the audience was overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the “Reds,” including members of the Cedar High student government who said they were proud of the current name and asked that the board not go back to the old mascot.

Tamra Borchardt-Slayton, the chairperson of the tribal council for the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, sent a letter to the board saying it would be “abhorrent” to bring back the mascot and asked the board to “move forward instead of living in the past with the nostalgia of adults.”

But Iron County resident Andrea Nelson alleged that those behind the move to change the name “are funded and supported by the far-left ideology people of this country … supported by George Soros and other far-left ideological money.”

She said that it had been “debunked” that such names are harmful to anyone.

Many on the school board agreed and wanted residents of the county to be able to weigh in.

“This isn’t just going to die without having a vote of the public,” said school board member Jeff Corry, who campaigned on the issue. “Everyone knows how I feel. It’s a pretty prideful name, is what it is.”

But board member Stephanie Hill said that the district has bigger issues and resources should not be spent on a non-binding straw election. One teacher, she said, had told her that 47% of the students were considered homeless. Hill said that the constituents who had contacted her were overwhelmingly in support of going back to the “Redmen” mascot.

“I want to make this clear: My interest is not in a mascot or in a name,” Hill said. “My interest is in bridging the socioeconomic gap and finding ways to celebrate in those classrooms.”

De cara a las elecciones en México el Cónsul del mencionado país en Utah, Eduardo Baca, ofreció información a Telemundo Utah acerca de las solicitudes de voto en el exterior que fueron rechazadas por algunas irregularidades en el registro.

Baca precisó que todas las personas que tengan problemas con su inscripción pueden contactar al Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE) hasta el próximo 5 de mayo para solicitar aclaraciones.

Así mismo recordó que, aunque Utah no contará con el voto presencial, quienes deseen formar parte de estos importantes comicios podrán hacerlo a través de los 20 consulados que están disponibles en el resto de Los Estados Unidos.

Por su parte el INE también hizo un llamado a la comunidad mexicana que reside en Utah: “Si recibiste un correo sobre una posible inconsistencia en tu registro al Listado Nominal del Electorado en el Extranjero (LNERE), tienes hasta el 5 de mayo para solicitar aclaraciones, a través del sitio web: https://votoextranjero.ine.mx o llama gratis desde Estados Unidos al 1-866-986-8306.”

Nota del editor • Esta artículo se publica a través de una asociación para compartir contenido entre Telemundo Utah y The Salt Lake Tribune.

A federal jury has found Daggett County liable for abuses some former inmates say they suffered while incarcerated there.

After deliberating several days, the jury handed down a split verdict. It found that three former inmates — Steven Drollette, Joshua Asay and Joshua Olsen — had their constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment violated. The jury did not find the county liable for Dustin Porter. Altogether, the jury awarded them $352,300 for the harms.

“I think the jury has sent a strong message that violations of the Eighth Amendment are serious and that counties will be held accountable when they mistreat their prisoners,” said the plaintiff’s lawyer, John Mejia of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah.

The inmates had accused their jailors of using a Taser on them as an “initiation” to their incarceration. One accused Deputy Joshua Cox of shocking inmates and promising them a case of soda should they withstand the shock for at least five seconds. The deputy was also accused of allowing a K-9 to bite two inmates.

The situation inside the jail became publicly known in 2017 when the Utah Department of Corrections abruptly pulled their inmates out of the Daggett County Jail. Then-Sheriff Jerry Jorgensen resigned as the Utah Attorney General’s Office brought criminal charges against him and several deputies employed at the jail. Most took plea deals, including Sheriff Jorgensen — though court records show his was later withdrawn after it was found a judge accepted the plea but it was technically not entered as a judgment. Prosecutors opted not to pursue further charges against Jorgensen and he retired.

Read more at fox13now.com.

The Salt Lake Tribune and Fox 13 News are content-sharing partners.

Several candidates running for Utah Governor in 2024 have amassed sizeable war chests ahead of this weekend’s Republican and Democratic State Nominating Conventions.

Incumbent Republican Spencer Cox’s campaign is sitting on nearly $1 million despite raising less than Democrat Brian King during the first months of the year. Republican challenger Phil Lyman also massively outraised Cox, but the source of those funds is raising some eyebrows among campaign finance watchdogs.

Lyman’s campaign raised more than $800,000 since January, more than five times the donations reported by Cox. Lyman’s gubernatorial bid is propped up financially by a massive loan from a former Texas Congressional candidate and BYU football player and hundreds of thousands of dollars from a newly-created company that may help hide donors to his campaign.

Lyman reported $300,000 in donations from Lehi-based Government Leadership Solutions, which was registered with the state of Utah on Jan. 10, the same day Utah’s candidate filing period closed. Three days later, it donated $100,000 to Lyman’s campaign and made another $200,000 donation in March. It is unclear what business Government Leadership Solutions conducts.

Government Leadership Solutions shares a Lehi address with Lyman Family Farm, which members of Lyman’s family own. According to business records filed with the State of Utah, Chris Webb is the sole listed officer for Government Leadership Solutions and the vice president of Lyman Family Farm. The same address is also home to Greenwave Finance. Joseph Hunt is the president of both Greenwave Finance and Lyman Family Farm. Webb’s LinkedIn profile lists him as the chief operating officer of Greenwave Financial. He previously was the vice president of Air Medical Resource Group, the company founded by Hunt’s father in the early 1980s.

Attempts by The Salt Lake Tribune to reach Webb and Hunt were unsuccessful. The phone number on Greenwave’s website led to a call center for customers and an operator could not provide a contact for Greenwave’s corporate leadership. No emails or phone numbers were included in corporate filings.

Lyman Family Farm has spent millions of dollars buying up Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) land at auction. Between 2014 and 2016, the company spent $6.4 million acquiring 5,214 acres, according to an analysis from the Center for Western Priorities.

SITLA manages millions of acres of land in Utah. These lands generate revenue for public education through energy development or auctioning parcels to the highest bidder. The governor appoints the SITLA Board of Trustees.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [CREW], a watchdog group, said Government Leadership Solutions appears to be a so-called “dark money” conduit to funnel money from Lyman’s family to his campaign while hiding the source. Utah has very few restrictions on political donations.

“There are a number of reasons why donors would want to hide their identity. Maybe they want to avoid public scrutiny. Or maybe they’re government contractors who face campaign finance restrictions that would be caught if they gave directly,” Robert Maguire, research director for CREW said in an email to The Tribune. “But this particular instance raises a third question: Is the candidate trying to hide the fact that a substantial portion of their campaign is being funded with family money.”

Lyman initially claimed there was no connection between Government Leadership Solutions and his family, and said in a text message that, “The company is not connected to my family at all.”

After detailing the web of links discovered through corporate filings, Lyman said Hunt’s wife is a distant relative and that Webb is a friend who “likes my campaign.”

Lyman then seemed to say Government Leadership Solutions was established to hide the source of donations to his campaign because donors feared reprisals from allies of Cox.

“Most people don’t trust the government, so [they] try to have a little anonymity,” Lyman texted. “I would have a lot more [donations] coming in if it weren’t for people’s fear of being targeted by Cox and co.”

Lyman also reported a $420,000 loan from Johnny Slavens on the same day that Government Leadership Solutions was founded. Slavens grew up in Blanding and played football at BYU in the late 1990s. Slavens ran for Congress in Texas in 2016, losing the GOP primary to another Republican, Sam Johnson. In 2022, Slavens was hired as the boy’s basketball coach for San Juan High School.

Flirting with disaster, Lyman’s campaign missed the initial deadline for filing the required pre-convention disclosure. Utah law gives candidates a 24-hour grace period for submitting reports. Lyman’s was filed with the lieutenant governor’s office mere minutes before the grace period ran out on Tuesday night. Had he missed both deadlines, Lyman would have been disqualified from the race.

Cox didn’t raise much money during the first part of 2024 — but he didn’t need to.

The Republican incumbent is sitting on a mountain of campaign cash heading into Saturday’s Republican State Nominating Convention. Cox has raised just over $155,000 in 2024, with the largest contribution coming from a $25,000 donation from Nomi Health. The company donated $50,000 to Cox’s campaign in 2022.

Nomi was part of a group of politically well-connected firms, including DOMO and Qualtrics, that came together to create the TestUtah initiative to oversee COVID testing in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The group used the program in Utah to secure millions of dollars in government contracts in Utah and other states. TestUtah was mired in scandal.

Nearly four out of every five dollars Cox has raised for his reelection campaign since January has come from corporations, industry groups or political action committees.

Cox’s largest individual donation was $10,416 from prominent Virginia-based political operative Phil Cox.

Cox has raised over $4.2 million since taking office in 2021. The campaign reported having just under $1 million in the bank.

Cox has spent heavily ramping up for his 2024 campaign. Last year, his team spent over $250,000 on advertising, while spending another $150,000 on ads ahead of this weekend’s convention. His campaign has also paid Election Hive, a political consulting firm headed, in part, by his cousin Jon Cox, more than $200,000 for campaign management and fundraising services.

Cox is the only Republican in the gubernatorial race to take the signature-gathering route to qualify for the primary election. Cox paid private company Gather $147,000 to collect the 28,000 signatures needed to guarantee a spot in the primary. His campaign also paid the company another $147,000 for signature gathering in late 2023.

Former Utah Republican Party Chairman Carson Jorgensen raised a fraction of what Cox and Lyman pulled in, reporting just $52,000 in campaign donations, including $4,000 of his own funds.

Democrat Brian King reported more than $170,000 in contributions since January and has just under $90,000 in the bank. He is unopposed for the Democratic nomination and will be on November’s ballot.

Republican Sylvia Miera-Fisk’s campaign is running in the red, with just $1,100 in donations and just over $10,000 in expenditures. Most of those campaign costs are listed as reimbursements to Fisk and her family members.

Another Republican running for governor, Scott Robbins, has self-financed his campaign so far, contributing just under $1,400.

Clarification, 2:10 p.m. • This story has been updated to clarify the type of land SITLA manages.

A proposal to split Utah’s largest school district into two smaller districts could head to ballots this November, though where exactly new district boundaries would fall is still being determined.

Officials from MGT, a Florida-based consulting firm MGT hired by the Alpine School District to perform a reconfiguration study, formally recommended a two-way split to school board members Tuesday evening. Ultimately, it’s up to the board to decide whether they’ll propose a ballot question.

“If the district does decide to go forward, a two-way split is preferential,” said Lance Richards, educational performance manager for MGT.

The recommendation comes after MGT spent weeks gathering resident feedback on five proposed scenarios that would divide the district into two or three parts. A sixth proposal to keep the district as-is was also presented to residents for feedback.

Of the six options, two involved a two-way split. MGT recommended that the board consider both of those options.

“There was not a lot of support for a three-way [split],” Richards said. “A three-way [split] in terms of splitting your resources and assets might be 10 times as hard in terms of complications.”

The two scenarios under consideration involve dividing Alpine into two separate districts — one to the east, and one to the west. The only difference between the options is whether Lehi would be placed in the east or west.

Alpine school board members now must determine which of the two scenarios they’d like to take to voters — if any.

The board could also forego MGT’s recommendation altogether, but any proposed change would hinge on voter approval. The board met for a study session Wednesday afternoon to continue discussion.

How residents feel

Splitting the Alpine School District has been a possibility for decades due to its rapid population growth — the district covers nearly half of Utah County, which encompasses 13 municipalities and 92 schools.

Despite several previous attempts to reconfigure the district, only one ever made it onto a ballot. The 2022 proposal would have created a new school district in Orem, which the Orem City Council first pitched in August of that year. It ultimately failed, with 73% of voters rejecting it.

Residents this time around overwhelmingly said they’d prefer to keep the district as one, according to in-person and online survey data collected by MGT. Around 11,000 residents and district staff participated.

Still, about 60% of respondents said they think the question of a split should go to a community-wide vote, Richards said. Staff, however, indicated they’d prefer the question not to go to ballots.

“By and large, to a ‘T’, everyone believes the district is doing a pretty good job of educating kids here,” Richards said. “Yet they still endorse a vote on reconfiguration in some form or fashion. "

When asked to weigh both two-way split options, 56% of all those surveyed favored the option with Lehi in the west. However, participants residing within the Lehi area showed a strong preference for the scenario where Lehi would be situated in the east.

An official vote on which option will be brought to ballots likely won’t happen until early May. The Utah County Commission would then need to approve the proposed ballot question, and the issue would need to undergo a 45-day public comment period, before it could be placed on the November ballot.

The line near a small Salt Lake City Airport hangar started growing more than an hour before Utah’s new NHL team was scheduled to land. Youth hockey players from all over the state wore their team jerseys and brought hockey sticks and signs, eager to catch a glimpse of the players and coaches who they’ll cheer for this fall.

Utah’s NHL team may not have a name yet. But it does have a home.

And on Wednesday, the former Arizona Coyotes players made their first stop in Salt Lake City. They patiently met with hundreds of young players and shook hands, signed caps, jerseys and shoes, and posed for photos.

“I’m excited because I’ll have a team from our state to root for,” said Allie Lowen, who plays hockey on a Salt Lake County rec team with mostly boys. “I’ll watch more hockey and I’ll get to watch more in-person hockey.”

Thousands of fans showed up for a free event at the Delta Center — a capacity crowd — on Wednesday afternoon. Before that, Lawson Crouse and Clayton Keller, along with coach André Tourigny and general manager Bill Armstrong, spoke warmly about the reception they received at the airport.

“Stepping off the plane was was unbelievable,” Keller said. “Just seeing the youth hockey programs, a lot of kids that know all of our names and things like that. We couldn’t be more excited.”