Disagreeing with dignity: Salt Lake School District hopes to be nation’s first ‘dignity district’

The Salt Lake City School District is hoping to make strides to foster respect, reduce hate, strengthen community and encourage civic responsibility through a Unity Summit.

The summit, held Friday at the state Capitol building, is part of a larger district campaign to become the first “dignity district” in the nation.

“We want to reduce contempt in our community, broadly and more specifically, in our district,” said Superintendent Elizabeth Grant. “Our emphasis is on dignity.”

To accomplish this, the district is harnessing the Dignity Index, an eight-point scale that measures the level of contempt or dignity in a selected passage of speech.

Lower scores (1-4) reflect a lack of dignity and the presence of contempt, with the lowest score (1) showing the most contempt. The higher scores (5-8) reflect language grounded in dignity, with the highest score (8) showing the most dignity.

“To foster this in the district, we’re getting teachers involved, students (are) certainly involved. The student leaders get it from the get-go — this difference between contempt and hate — they see it in the community around them and they find ways to mention to each other, ‘That’s not treating somebody with dignity,'” Grant said.

The summit is the first cog in a yearlong process to get the initiative up and running. It welcomed about 150 students from East High School, Highland High School, Horizonte Instruction and Training Center and West High School. Most of the students in attendance are involved in student government groups at their respective schools.

Asher Lucas, student body president at West High, said he’s looking forward to starting the conversation on eradicating hate in school communities with the goal of furthering safety in schools.

“As student body president, I’ve been able to see firsthand how people have felt unsafe or hated in our school. So being able to see that in our community has given me the desire to come here and help eradicate that,” Asher said.

Throughout the summit, students will hear from a variety of speakers, watch a film, get a breakdown of the Dignity Index and participate in a panel discussion moderated by Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, before breaking out into school groups to discuss takeaways from the summit and have time to reflect through journaling.

District leaders are hoping that starting the conversation with student leaders will help disseminate the initiative through the schools and through the district.

“Student leaders are the future of what’s going to happen in Salt Lake District and they set the tone for their schools. That’s what’s important,” Grant said. “To have their voices heard, to have them see themselves as part of a larger group and a larger effort to change the dynamics in our schools and move toward dignity in our interactions is pretty impressive. They come up with all sorts of ways to build this into the structure of schooling and the school day.”

Especially during a time when division is present among young people, the district is hoping this larger campaign focused on dignity and respect can help dial down the temperature a bit.

“There is a lot of contempt in our discourse with each other on difficult issues,” Grant said. “We can treat each other with dignity on the athletic field; we can treat each other with dignity as we advocate for different causes; we can treat each other with dignity as we share our differences of opinion. This is about how we engage with each other as people … that we respect the dignity of others, no matter their position.”

In an announcement for the launch of the district’s quest to become a “dignity district,” Grant said the initiative is not about ending disagreement but disagreeing with dignity.

The summit was organized in partnership with various community organizations such as the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office, Community Partners Against Hate, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, the Salt Lake Human Rights Commission and the United Jewish Federation of Utah.

“I’m hoping that (the summit) will create conversations that we need to have to start eradicating that hate for every group of students in our communities and spread ideas of how we can be safer in our schools,” Asher said.

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