Police in Salt Lake City deal with more calls for services than other law enforcement agencies in the Wasatch Front, and officers are more likely than others to deal with hazardous situations or be involved in shootings, according to Steve Winters, president of the Salt Lake City Police Association.

Yet he said the city is eighth among Wasatch Front police departments based on its highest hourly officer pay rate — making it more difficult for the capital city to stay competitive and keep seasoned officers as it faces population growth and other challenges.

“This pay inequity simply cannot continue,” Winters told Salt Lake City Council members on Tuesday. “The pressures on police have never been more difficult than they are today.”

As union members negotiate their wages with the city administration as part of the mayor’s annual budget proposal, more than a dozen officers attended the council’s meeting Tuesday, many to make emotional pleas for higher pay.

“Our police officers are some of the best people you will ever meet,” said Officer Sarah Crane, who brought her young son to the podium with her. “They do a phenomenal job. They’re passionate. They are smart. They are caring and they work really hard. And we should be really proud of the people that we employ. But we’re going to start losing them, because we have to consider our families and we have to consider our pay.”

Officer Alen Gibic stepped up to the mic next, telling council members that after spending 13 years with the department, he recently applied for a position with a different city in the valley — and was offered a 15% pay raise if he made the switch.

“Every year I stay here my paychecks are worth less money,” he said. “One example is that I have to keep increasing my family’s grocery budget every year to keep up with the rising costs.”

“A lot of us feel like we’re in a sinking ship,” he said. “Please save us.”

The council, which isn’t involved in wage negotiations, didn’t discuss the officers’ comments on Tuesday. But Council Chairman Charlie Luke said in a statement that the council “supports all of Salt Lake City’s public safety personnel” and are willing to meet with union representatives outside of the budget process.

A spokesman for the mayor’s office declined to discuss its ongoing discussions.

Winters told The Salt Lake Tribune that there’s “been no offer from the city on the table” as of Thursday afternoon and said the officers came to the council as a preemptive move in case they don’t get the outcome they’re hoping for.

“We feel that we’re not going to get the numbers we want, so we’re trying to prepare [the council] and hope they can get on our side,” he said.

A spokesman from the mayor’s office said Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski has personally reached out to the union president to discuss wages as part of the overall compensation package but has not yet heard back.

The highest pay cap for Salt Lake City police officers is lower than in Park City, Murray, Heber City, Sandy, Cottonwood Heights, Kaysville and West Valley, according to an August 2018 analysis Winter provided to The Salt Lake Tribune.

That can make it more difficult to hold on to seasoned police officers, Winter said.

“Recruitment is always an issue in law enforcement and it’s become more and more so now because of the general sentiment of what’s happening toward law enforcement,” he said in an interview Thursday. “We’ve kind of got a bad rep right now and because of that, every police department — not just us — is struggling in that. So holding on to your staff is very very important right now. More so than normally.”

It can be difficult to compare police benefits and salaries, since agencies top out pay after different periods of service and have pay scales that vary based on qualifications, experience, training and education. A comprehensive study is “the unicorn everybody wants,” said Ian Adams, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police.

The top pay analysis takes into consideration some of the differences in department offerings. It shows officers in 2018 could make up to $39 an hour in Park City, $37.01 in Murray and $35.18 in Heber, while Salt Lake City’s hourly wage caps out at $33.10.

Salt Lake City police last year received an increase in starting, entry-level pay, which a spokesman for the mayor said was an effort to better recruit officers. That increase came as part of a sales tax hike the council approved to pay for streets, transit, affordable housing and public safety.

But in a growing city, officers said they need more to stay competitive.

“As we continue to move forward with the expected [United Nations conference] coming in August, with the growing possibility of the Olympics, with all the concerts, Jazz games, corporate sponsored activities, how do we continue to ignore the growing problem of pay inequity?” Winters asked the council on Tuesday.

Officer John Fitisemanu pointed out that, in light of growth and the increasing complexity of their duties, the council had increased its own wages — and he argued they should do the same for the police department.

“While you’re able to vote your own raises, we at the police department are unable to do so, or else we would have by now,” he told the council. “Police officers in this department are frustrated, confused and angry at the lack of cooperation and concern from Salt Lake City officials.”

After the mayor’s budget package comes to the council, which is expected to happen in early May, the council will weigh in and could make changes to the police wages.

Vatican City • Pope Francis on Thursday named Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory as the new archbishop of Washington, D.C., choosing a moderate, and the first African American, to lead the archdiocese that has become the epicenter of the clergy sex abuse crisis in the U.S.

Gregory, 71, replaces Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who resigned last year after being implicated in covering up abuse by a Pennsylvania grand jury report.

Gregory headed the U.S. bishops conference when it adopted a “zero-tolerance” abuse policy in 2002 to respond to the first wave of the scandal. He has run the Atlanta archdiocese since 2005 and is seen as a pastor very much in line with Francis’ progressive vision of the church.

The appointment was first reported by Catholic News Agency.

It is the third major move by Francis to reshape the U.S. hierarchy, which over the previous two papacies took on a conservative tilt. Francis began elevating more moderate pastors in 2014, when he named Cardinal Blase Cupich as Chicago archbishop and followed up two years later by moving Joseph Tobin to Newark, N.J., and making him a cardinal.

While relatively small, the Washington archdiocese has always punched above its weight in influence given its location in the nation’s capital. Its archbishops traditionally are made cardinals, meaning Gregory could become the first African American cardinal.

The archdiocese, though, has become embroiled in the abuse crisis since its previous two leaders — Wuerl and his predecessor Theodore McCarrick — have been implicated in the scandal.

Francis in February defrocked McCarrick after a Vatican-backed investigation concluded he sexually abused minors and adults over his long career. It was the first time a cardinal had been dismissed from the priesthood for abuse.

Francis reluctantly accepted Wuerl’s resignation in October after he lost the trust of his priests and parishioners in the months following the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report. The report accused Wuerl of helping to protect some child-molesting priests while he was bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006. Simultaneously, Wuerl faced widespread skepticism over his insistence that he knew nothing about McCarrick’s misconduct, which was an open secret in U.S. and Vatican circles.

Gregory, by contrast, is still credited for his leadership of the U.S. church during a moment of crisis, when as president of the U.S. bishops conference he persuaded church leaders to adopt toughened penalties for abusers in 2002.

“Gregory has impeccable credentials for dealing with the sex abuse crisis, which is essential for healing the church,” the Rev. Thomas Reese, an expert on the American church, said in a column Thursday at Religion News Service.

That said, the 2002 reform that Gregory shepherded through explicitly excluded bishops from the “zero-tolerance” policy — a loophole that has become evident with the McCarrick scandal. U.S. bishops are expected to address gap at their upcoming meeting, where all eyes will likely be on Gregory.

Gregory also won praise from another American Jesuit, the Rev. James Martin, who was invited last year by Gregory to give a talk in Atlanta on how the church should better minister to the LGBTQ community. The initiative drew criticism from some conservatives who accused Gregory of not upholding church teaching on homosexuality.

In a statement, Martin said Gregory was a “superb choice” for Washington given his leadership on the abuse crisis and because he is “someone who knows how to reach out to marginalized populations.”

Wuerl, too, praised the choice, saying Washington can welcome “with great confidence and enthusiasm” a new shepherd. “I join all who appreciate his pastoral abilities, his intellectual gifts and his leadership qualities,” Wuerl said in a statement.

For his part, Gregory said he was grateful to Francis for the nomination and looked forward to “encountering and listening” to the Washington flock. He will be installed May 17 as the seventh archbishop of Washington, serving a community of around 659,000 Catholics.

Gregory has responded to the latest outbreak of the scandal by expressing his own anger, shame and disillusionment at the failures of the hierarchy. In an August statement to the faithful after McCarrick resigned as a cardinal, he acknowledged his own esteem and respect for McCarrick had been “clearly misplaced.”

He conceded that, going forward, oversight of bishops by laity “may well provide the only credible assurance that real and decisive actions are being taken.

In Atlanta, Gregory was embroiled briefly in a scandal of his own in 2014 after the archdiocese used $2.2 million in donations to buy and renovate a swank new home for the archbishop. The archdiocese later sold the mansion and Gregory apologized following an outcry from parishioners who cited Francis’ frugality as a model other church leaders should follow.

A native of Chicago, Gregory is a protege of the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who consecrated him as a bishop in 1983. Gregory was bishop of Belleville, Ill., from 1994 until his installation in Atlanta in 2005.

New York • Attorneys for Michael Cohen are asking members of Congress to help keep him out of prison.

In a letter sent to lawmakers Thursday, Cohen’s legal team said he is still sorting through documents in his personal files that might be of interest to House Democrats investigating President Donald Trump, including emails, voice recordings, images and other documents on a hard drive.

"To date, Mr. Cohen has located several documents that we believe have significant value to the various congressional oversight and investigation committees," wrote the attorneys, Lanny Davis, Michael Monico and Carly Chocron.

They said Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and fixer, has been going through the documents alone, without any help, and if he reports to prison May 6 as scheduled, he won't be able to finish reviewing the material.

They asked the lawmakers to write letters saying that Cohen was cooperating and that "the substantial trove of new information, documents, recordings, and other evidence he can provide requires substantial time with him and ready access to him by congressional committees and staff to complete their investigations and to fulfill their oversight responsibilities."

If any lawmakers were to write such a letter, it could be useful if Cohen petitioned the court to delay his prison report date.

The letter was sent to U.S. Representatives Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings

Cohen, who pleaded guilty last year to tax evasion, fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations, has already received one short delay on medical grounds while he recovered from shoulder surgery.

In their letter to lawmakers, Cohen's lawyers said they were still holding out hope that federal prosecutors in New York would not only back another delay in the start of his prison term, but agree to reopen his case and advocate for a lighter sentence. He has been sentenced to a three-year term.

"It is our hope that the authorities in the Southern District of New York will consider this total picture of cooperation by Mr. Cohen, verified by your letter and the important new evidence he has made available or could make available to assist the government, and the particular facts involved here to grant Mr. Cohen a reduced term following the rules and procedures of the Southern District of New York."

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Manhattan declined to comment.

New York prosecutors previously advocated for a tough sentence, saying the crimes were serious and that the help Cohen had provided to ongoing investigations wasn’t as valuable or as complete as Cohen had claimed.

Last week, 98% of you knew that Utah women will no longer need a prescription for birth control, but only 47% knew that 135,000 acres of public land in Utah were leased for oil and gas exploration. Think you kept up with the news this week? Take our quiz to find out. A new one will post every Friday morning. You can find previous quizzes here. If you’re using The Salt Lake Tribune mobile app, click here.

For clarification and fact checking — but hopefully not cheating — purposes, you can find the stories referenced in each question here: Question 1, Question 2, Question 3, Question 4, Question 5, Question 6, Question 7, Question 8, Question 9, Question 10, Question 11 and Question 12.

Brigham Young University’s law school and the dating website Match.com may seem like an unlikely pair.

But the two organizations recently partnered up to take a new approach to the law school’s mentoring program by using Match Group’s personality algorithm to pair law students with alumni mentors.

It’s a novel approach for BYU, a private university owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and for Match. A representative for the company, which owns Match.com and Chemistry.com, said this is the first time it has used its algorithm outside the dating world.

“There are similarities to dating in the way that a mentor and mentee would need to relate,” said Jared Sine, general counsel for Match and a BYU alum.

The mentoring program works somewhat like setting up an online dating profile with Match. Participants answer a series of questions about topics like their interests, their views on life and their perspectives on the world.

The students then are sorted into four personality types — builder, director, explorer and negotiator — and paired with an alumni who scored similarly.

Gayla Sorenson, the law school’s assistant dean of external relations, said she hopes this innovative approach will help create relationships that benefit not only students learning about the law but also graduates who are now working in the legal field.

Sorenson said the school’s mentoring program had fizzled out before. In previous programs, students and mentors had been matched purely by geographical location or the area of law in which someone was interested.

“That doesn’t really give you a basis for a friendship necessarily,” Sorenson said.

In-person meetups also were encouraged, and participants had required readings.

But now, Sorenson said, the school is leaning on technology to give the mentoring program a fresh start. Not only are students and mentors paired with an online algorithm, but also in-person meetups are out and phone or video calls are in. The pairs have been instructed to talk for an hour a month about a specific topic.

Sorenson said about 90 percent of first-year law students signed up for the mentorship program, an early signal that the new approach may be successful.

The program officially launched in February, and Sorenson said the paired mentors and students are having their first conversations.

She’s a part of the mentorship program, too, and was paired with another “explorer” like herself, someone who tends to be enthusiastic about starting new things — but may not always be the best on following through on a project to its conclusion.

“Our first conversation, we talked about how, from a career perspective, we need to play to our strengths,” she said, “and be very conscious of not biting off more than we can chew.”

While it’s too early to tell whether this new approach will yield lasting relationships, Match Group is excited to see how the pilot program works. And Sorenson said is encouraged by the early reviews.

“The feedback is people have had a good first conversation,” she said. “They have had a lot in common with the person they were allied with. We’re energized by the positive feedback so far.”

I was raised homophobic. Yup. A full-on gay basher by the time I was in third grade. I didn’t even know what homosexuality was, other than something to be reviled as the most horrible of things.

My parents didn’t teach me my bigoted behavior. Rather it was the time in which I lived. In the 1950s and ’60s, it was just plain wrong to be gay.

Looking for a fistfight? All it took back then was to level an anti-gay slur against another guy and it was on.

Later, I would learn that the fight was on even if the other guy really was gay. Such was the social stigma that even closeted gays were frantic to prove themselves “normal.”

In the seventh grade, I called a good friend named “Gordy” a homophobic name because he couldn’t climb the rope in P.E. class. We got into a fight that a gym teacher had to break up.

I was over the clash by day’s end, but Gordy was still livid. We got into it again at the bus stop, where he ended up hitting me in the face with a rock. Ten stitches’ worth. Still got the scar. Gordy never talked to me again.

Imagine how I felt when, years later, I found out through others he trusted that Gordy had come out to his friends and family. He had a partner and everything.

What I didn’t have was a good friend. Gordy and I had everything else in common, save our sexual orientation. What a dumb reason to lose a friend.

I remember when my views changed. I wish I could claim that I was smart enough to have realized on my own that such behavior was patently wrong and even harmful. But it took another friend to get me past it. And Ralph didn’t have to slam me with a rock.

Ralph wasn’t gay, but his older brother was. Bradley was the epitome of cool. He looked like a young Clint Eastwood and drove a Triumph sports car. He also had a boyfriend. One day I pointed this out to Ralph.

Me • “Your brother likes guys.”

Ralph • “So? He’s still fun.”

Couldn’t argue with “so?” Bradley told great jokes, took us places and bought us stuff. We would go to the pool, where he would point out cute girls and dare us to talk to them.

Him • “That brunette is hot. Go talk to her.”

Me • “No.”

Him • “What? You like boys? OK, try that chubby kid in the cutoffs.”

You see, someone had to teach me to stop being homophobic. They had to undo years of shaming people because other people thought it was funny or appropriate or even doctrinally sound.

Bradley is 70 today. Last I heard, he’s still with his boyfriend. All these years later, I understand that they were the ones who gently shamed me out of my prejudice.

It wasn’t other people screaming profanity or sending me nasty posts. Rather it was someone who was brave enough to be himself and show me that we had far more in common than not.

Today, I don’t require a policy or a revelation to tell me how to choose or even treat my friends. All I care is that they’re interesting and fun.

Boring? Now there’s a real sin.

Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.

If you thought the first 11 episodes of “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” were dark — and they definitely were — wait 'til you see episodes 12-20, which begin streaming on Netflix on Friday.

Oh, and don’t miss the one with the faux Mormon missionaries. Really.

The fifth of the new nine episodes — No. 17 overall — is titled, appropriately, “The Missionaries.” It opens with a clean-cut young man sporting a white shirt, tie and a name tag who says, “Have you ever asked yourself, ‘Where did I come from? Why am I here?’”

That’s definitely on the nose. And if that’s not enough evidence that missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints helped inspire the character: The executive producer of “Sabrina,” who’s also the executive producer of “Riverdale,” asked one of the writers of the latter show about his experience as a Latter-day Saint missionary as background for “The Missionaries.”

(“Riverdale” co-executive producer Aaron Allen is a Utah native — he grew up in Bountiful.)

And before you start spouting conspiracy theories, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that “The Missionaries” starts streaming on the eve of the LDS General Conference. That's not an event that's exactly on Netflix's radar.

Not everything about the faux LDS missionaries in “Sabrina” is exactly true-to-life. They each travel alone, although there are several of them. And while the first one we see in the episode tells a warlock, “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to save you,” he says it while he’s torturing the teen.

And the missionaries’ name tags identify their church as the Order of the Innocents.

If you've seen “Sabrina,” it will come as no surprise to you that the show is very violent and, yes, super dark. No less than Satan himself — complete with a goat head, horns and claws — is a recurring character.

If you come into this thinking it's going to be anything like the 1996-2003 sitcom “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” boy, are you going to be surprised. The creepiest thing about the sitcom was the animatronic cat that looked liked an animated cat corpse; the level of creepiness in this total reboot is off the charts.

“The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is sort of a spinoff of “Riverdale.” They were both adapted by executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sagas from the Archie comic books, and “Sabrina” was originally developed to air alongside “Riverdale” on The CW.

When the project moved to Netflix, I wondered why. When I screened the first couple of episodes, I thought, “Oh. That’s why.” And that was long before I saw Episode 14, “The Lupercalia,” about a festival highlighted by ritual sex between teenage witches and warlocks.

It’s not super-graphic in terms of the sex. And high schoolers having sex is hardly an anomaly on TV — they do it all the time on “Riverdale.” But, again, “Sabrina” is often cruel, vicious and murderous and built on black magic.

If you’ve seen any of the earlier episodes, you know that when she turned 16, Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka, “Mad Men”) learned that she is a half-witch and that she was expected to sign herself over to the Dark Lord and receive her full powers. That continues to play out in the new episodes, as it becomes more and more clear that Satan has something special in mind for Sabrina. She remains a spunky, smart teenage girl who’s not trying to avoid the dark magic as much as she’s trying to turn it to her advantage.

But no spoilers here.

Except ... wait 'til you see those faux LDS missionaries!

On three mornings each week, some 40 or 50 people gather on clear days in the plaza of the Salt Lake City Library’s downtown branch for tai chi. Wednesday was not a clear day, so they improvised.

Marita Hart took about half of the group, many of them homeless people who had waited in the rain for the library to open, inside to the basement level of the library’s atrium. Her husband, Bernie, took the rest across the street to the lawn of City Hall.

What do dozens of homeless people get from tai chi at the library? One participant, Chris Coons, put it plainly: “Sanity. Just a positive, happy, peaceful, tranquil environment.”

Librarians nationwide have known for decades, from firsthand experience, that some of their most regular patrons were homeless. Much of the public had no clue until 2007, when Chip Ward, then the assistant librarian at the Salt Lake City Library’s main branch, wrote an essay about the issue before his retirement after 30 years in libraries.

“I wanted to be a good witness and bear my testimony on the way out the door,” said Ward, 69, now living in Torrey. “I just wanted to raise awareness that public libraries had, in fact, become de facto shelters for the homeless during the day, and librarians were coping with a pretty serious challenge.”

One person who read the essay was the actor and filmmaker Emilio Estevez.

Estevez — whose onscreen history with libraries goes back to “The Breakfast Club” in the 1980s — was so taken with Ward’s essay that he bought the film rights to it and wrote a script inspired by it. After several starts and stops, Estevez’s movie, “The Public,” is opening Friday in theaters nationwide.

Estevez saw what Ward was describing years before the essay was published. Estevez did most of the research for his 2006 drama “Bobby,” about the days before Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, in the Los Angeles Public Library.

“It wasn’t localized to Salt Lake City, it was the epidemic,” Estevez said over the phone from Cincinnati, where he was screening the movie on a cross-country tour. “He was talking about every urban library, which was experiencing a very similar situation.”

Homeless people, Estevez said, “are outcasts and misfits and marginalized and poor, yet they all have a story. Oftentimes, we assign a story to an individual, that is our own bias. ... I’m hoping that people will take another look and treat these individuals with dignity. Because they have a name and a face, and some of them have a family. Homelessness is not a condition, it’s a situation.”

That sense of individual humanity is something libraries can provide beyond services or assistance, said Paul Bromberg, executive director of the Salt Lake City Library.

“It’s a place where someone can come, and just make eye contact with them, and smile, and say, ‘How are you today?’” Bromberg said. “If you go to the mall, you might get kicked out. If you’re on the corner, someone might say, ‘Move it along.’ But a public library, by design, is open and welcoming to every resident.”

One of the library’s additions to help the homeless is a first-floor desk staffed by Volunteers for America. The partnership with VOA, started in 2010, connects people with resources — whether it’s getting housing vouchers or providing socks or a jacket. (The library provides some storage space for such items, as well as administrative support.)

“The population on the street tends to be not very trusting. You can’t just walk up and say, ‘Hey, let me give you some help,’” Bromberg said. “If they’re coming to the library on a regular basis, and the VOA staff are here, over time they can say hello, make eye contact, build up a relationship, build up a sense of trust.”

Other services simply offer people ways to pass the time. At computer terminals in the main branch, people access their email accounts or watch YouTube videos. On the main branch’s first floor, two guys play chess using 3-foot-tall chess pieces.

Bromberg said the library has adjusted its daytime programming, which usually had been child-focused events like preschool story time, to provide events adults could enjoy. These include arts and crafts programs, designed to “get people engaged creatively, getting their hands moving — there’s therapeutic value in that,” Bromberg said.

The tai chi sessions, which the Harts started three years ago, aren’t officially part of the library’s services, Marita Hart said, but the library’s permission to use the space is a blessing.

The group splits between the library atrium and the City Hall lawn for two reasons, Marita Hart said. One is that the library would require a permit for any group over 50 people. The other is that some participants are barred from the library, for violating the rules of conduct inside — a list that includes public intoxication, committing a crime, engaging in lewd behavior or damaging library property. Bans for the worst offenses can last up to three years.

On the plaza before the library opens, the Harts and other volunteers offer hot coffee and breakfast burritos. Once the doors open, people take their spots and follow the tai chi leader’s moves.

Above them, on a staircase between the first and second floors, Larry Winn — known as “Wolf” by others on the street — plays a recorder. The soothing music echoes through the atrium, creating a sound like the world’s largest day spa.

One woman, Nancy Humphrey, said tai chi gave her “self-confidence. Realizing I can, too, learn. I’m learning socialization, which I’m not so good with.”

“Our goal,” Marita Hart said, “is to [help them] step up to another level. To want something better, to have a voice.”

Ward didn’t know immediately that his voice, in that 2007 essay, was heard.

“The first signal I got that somebody else was paying attention,” Ward said, was when Estevez’s father, the actor Martin Sheen, contacted Ward’s publisher to ask permission to use the essay in a speech. Shortly after that, Estevez contacted Ward about acquiring the film rights.

When Estevez read the essay, first in the Los Angeles Times and in longer form on TomDispatch.com, “I began to imagine what it would look like if these people, these patrons, staged an old-fashioned, 1960s-style sit-in,” Estevez said. “How would law enforcement react? How would the media spin it and report on it? How, ultimately, would politicians use the event, and maybe change the narrative to their own political gain?”

All those things happen in “The Public,” when a group of homeless men decide to occupy the third floor of The Public Library in Cincinnati on a bitterly cold night. The librarian, Stuart Goodson (played by Estevez), takes up their cause and becomes their spokesman. He faces a police negotiator (Alec Baldwin), a prosecutor (Christian Slater) running for mayor and a reporter (Gabrielle Union) more interested in soundbites than substance.

Estevez had financial backing to make “The Public” in 2008, but it fell apart in the financial crisis that year. Estevez went to Spain to direct “The Way,” a movie about a father (played by Sheen) fulfilling his son’s wish to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.

“In the meantime, I just couldn’t shake this, and I thought it was a story that needed to be told,” Estevez said. “Every aspect of this movie feels very timely and relevant, and perhaps more so than if we had made it 10 years ago.”

Over that 12 years, Ward found his essay was having its impact. In some reprintings, the essay’s headline was “What they didn’t teach us in library school.” Ward is proud to note that many colleges that teach library science now do. “Apparently, I made it into the curriculum,” he said.

Ward said he and Estevez have been “like pen pals for the last 11 years,” but never met in person until last month. That’s when Estevez, as part of a six-week tour showing “The Public” to groups around the country, brought it to the Salt Lake City Library.

Estevez recalled “how kind and how gracious and generous Chip was. He had been somewhat of a north star for me. He kept encouraging me. ... He said, ‘Have faith,’ ‘You’re on the right track,’ ‘Don’t abandon this’ and ‘Godspeed.’ There was a part of me that didn’t want to disappoint him.”

(By the way, Estevez kind of fell in love with the Salt Lake City Library. “It is absolutely breathtaking, architecturally, and how it’s organized,” he said. “The staff there was just a bunch of really terrific folks.”)

Ward enjoyed the movie. “I thought it was sort of an old-fashioned feel-good kind of movie, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Ward said. “It underscores how libraries have become de facto shelters, the struggle that librarians pursue, and the grace that they bring to that struggle. And the homeless characters in the movie were sympathetic, and that’s not a population that gets a very sympathetic treatment.”

Estevez said he hopes “The Public” will make people appreciate their local library anew. “I hope people occupy their library,” Estevez said. “I hope they go back and discover that librarians were the first Google. Libraries are where facts live. These days, when we’re not getting a lot of facts delivered on a daily basis, it requires some effort. We have to do a little digging to uncover the truth.”

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times, a 3,000-circulation newspaper in Iowa. In 2017, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing disguised as investigative reporting — an exposé on corporate agriculture and river pollution. The distinction didn’t help much with the newspaper’s bottom line.

“We lost money the same year we won the Pulitzer,” said Cullen. “In fact, circulation declined in the three months surrounding the Pulitzer.” Some of Cullen’s prize money went to pay bank loans.

The only part of this saga that’s exceptional for local newspapers across the country is the Pulitzer. The rest is standard — local news is dying, and there’s a scramble afoot to save it. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation declared in February a doubling of its commitment to bolstering local journalism to the tune of $300 million over five years. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has suggested a willingness to pay publishers for their content in a possible Facebook news tab.

At a Washington Post event on Thursday, Facebook executive Anne Kornblut, a former Post journalist, spoke of the stakes at play. "Our focus and my personal focus is on helping publications figure out a business model for the future, how to help them do that. We want them to be viable. We want to get to a place where they're able to survive," she told The Post's Sarah Ellison.

These concerns are tardy. The local newspapers that still exist are struggling to bring news of consequence to their communities. A recent Duke University study of 100 randomly selected communities came to these depressing conclusions: "Eight communities contained no stories addressing critical information needs. Twelve communities contained no original news stories. Twenty communities contained no local news stories."

The problem isn’t that there aren’t journalists excited about reporting local news, or that there aren’t people who want local news. It’s that the business model has collapsed. Local newspapers once maintained a stranglehold on distribution of information and advertising to their customers — a stranglehold the internet swept away. Advertising revenue — classified ads, display ads, forgettable ads — has cratered as well, as local newspapers have had trouble competing with the reach and targeting capabilities of Google and Facebook. Those two companies command about 60 percent of the $111 billion online advertising pie.

Yet Facebook, to hear Kornblut tell it, is concerned about the trends in local news. "Facebook's core mission is community and building community. And local news is one of the most important ways you can actually build community. We've seen people come together around local news in a way that I think it would be devastating if it were somehow lost," she said.

Ask Cullen about Facebook, and he mentions all the little ads that he’s lost to the platform — $9.95 classifieds for selling a pickup truck, or promoting a garage sale. Though he’s the paper’s editor, he’ll ask anyone to place an ad.

“Need to move a couch?” he asked the Erik Wemple Blog. “People value that ... newspaper and so they supported it, they supported it. Then small-town businesses discover Facebook or Google, and there goes that 20-buck ad you were living on, and we live on $20 ads. That’s how we make a living, off the scraps that fall off the table,” said Cullen.

The issue gets more fraught with each level of Facebook sanctimoniousness. At one point in her chat, Kornblut declared that local news is "important for democracy."

It’s here where Cullen tees off. Coming up in the industry, Cullen learned that there are special constitutional protections for journalism, with special gate-keeping obligations that come as part of the deal. Facebook has proven an unreliable gatekeeper, considering that it allowed Russian agents to Russian agents to seed Facebook with “inflammatory posts” to 126 million Facebook users in an effort to divide the country in the 2016 presidential race.

“What they’re doing is taking our revenue to feed the beast of deceit and division and all those things that we were supposed to guard against as gatekeepers,” said Cullen.

Erik Wemple, The Washington Post’s media critic, focuses on the cable-news industry. Before joining The Post, he ran a short-lived and much publicized local online news operation, and for eight years served as editor of Washington City Paper.

@ErikWemple

C’mon DirecTV and KSL owners, you’ve been at impasse for too long now. It’s time to step up and think about your customers.

If the issues were programming or program content, maybe we could overlook the fact that we’re paying for a service that is temporarily not available. But it isn’t. It’s all about money.

If DirecTV is not paying KSL for its service, then why are you not lowering the monthly fee for those of us who are still paying for it? Maybe you should make it available to those of us who want to have it, for an additional cost. I would pay.

Many of my friends have abandoned DirecTV and switched services. I'm thinking that direction myself.

Don C. Gardner, Sandy

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Well, Mr. Lee, you've done it again.

What a performance you did on the floor of the Senate, trying your best to show how climate change is nothing more than a hoax, perpetrated on the good citizens of this country by those left-wing, socialist Democrats, who only want to bring attention to themselves and really have no solutions to this problem.

Why? Because, in Republican world, and corporate polluting world, greed supersedes the actual welfare of the people you are supposed to represent.

I assume that the corporate campaign contributions are just too great to resist. Am I right? That has to be the case. Why else would you stand up and espouse that the real answer to climate change is having more babies? Do these babies have special powers that will eliminate air and water pollution? Or are they immune to asthma or heart disease?

Will these babies be test-tube babies, grown in a special lab, that will be known as X-babies, or X-Men and X-Women?

I'm curious, Mr. Lee, do you and your colleagues in the Senate truly believe that the world around us is not changing for the worse, but the better, due to pollution? Or is greasing the palm better than actually saving the planet from its impending doom?

Quit acting like climate change is not real, because it is, and do your damn job, instead of embarrassing the state with your antics.

Charles Glaser, West Valley City

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Folks, you can’t seriously make this stuff up.

Recently, Kellyanne Conway, assistant to the president, said House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff is “completely” compromised. I guess she takes this from her “Book of Trumpkin.”

In the 1980s we had the “Great Communicator,” Ronald Reagan. In 2019, we have the “Great Compromiser,” Donald Trump. He was always compromised in his business dealings and, like it or not, no matter what the Mueller report said or indicated, our sitting president is indeed compromised vis-a-vis the Russians. Maybe not complicit, but certainly compromised.

So yes, Kellyanne, you would know compromised working for “The Donald.”

Kent C. Overly, Draper

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The military has warned us that climate change is dangerous on many fronts, including direct impacts on our military infrastructure and the destabilizing forces causing conflict and migration abroad.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson announced the need for $4.9 billion additional funding to rebuild and repair two bases heavily damaged by extreme weather events. Tyndall AFB in Florida was devastated by Hurricane Michael and Offutt AFB in Nebraska was flooded by the Missouri River.

At the same time, Trump is taking funds from the military to build his wall. Sen. Mike Lee made a fool of himself making fun of the Green New Deal. There is little doubt that these weather catastrophes, along with destructive wildfires, flooding, hurricanes and drought, are climate-change related. It is time for our politicians to face the new reality of climate disaster and act to curb it.

Urge Congress to support HR763: the bipartisan and revenue neutral Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. It will reduce America’s carbon emissions while helping protect our health, put money in our pockets, and create more than 2 million jobs.

Jean M. Lown, Logan

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Gov. Gary Herbert let a bill go into law without his signature Wednesday that imposes a 178% increase in a statewide 911 fee.

The measure was one of just three Herbert didn’t sign — a signal of displeasure — but stopped short of vetoing. It will mean a 16-cent per month increase in the monthly fee charged on every cellphone and landline in the state beginning July 1. While that doesn’t sound like much, it adds up to real money: $5.2 million next year and, by 2022, $8.4 million.

Opposed by some lawmakers as a tax hike, the bill is intended to cover the costs of a massive upgrade of 911 technology in the state. The change is aimed at increasing the accuracy and reliability of 911 service, implementing a new generation of equipment that will allow “pinpoint routing” where a call goes directly to a 911 center rather than being routed through a cellphone tower.

This planned multimillion-dollar overhaul — officials haven’t provided a cost estimate because they have yet to solicit bids — comes on the heels of another pricey equipment upgrade. The Utah Communications Authority (UCA) is in the midst of contracting for a $50 million purchase of new two-way radios and related equipment for first responders. The contract negotiations have been temporarily placed on hold while the losing bidder appeals the decision.

“Because the stakes are so high with the Next Generation 911 and because our 911 systems need critical upgrades, I agree that SB154 should become law,” the governor wrote in explaining his decision not to sign the bill. “However, the Utah Communications Authority should do more in coming months to articulate a clear business case including performance measures, the need for a 178% increase in the statewide 911 emergency service charge, and a plan to incorporate improvements resulting from this bill into the overall 911 structure."

The bill was backed by the Utah Sheriffs Association, the Utah Chiefs of Police, the Utah Association of Counties and the Utah League of Cities and Towns. It also eventually won the support of an overwhelming majority of legislators, but not before a lot of debate and significant changes. In the end, the bill that passed was the fourth version, and made it through only after it was defeated, then resurrected, on the House floor.

“I know a lot of us are going to have a hard time with a yes vote on this bill because we have to go back and explain our votes to our constituents,” said Rep. Susan Duckworth, D-Magna. She said her explanation would be a simple one: “Would you rather have an Uber respond faster than public safety to your home when you have an emergency?”

But Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, argued that if the need for new 911 equipment was so critical, it should have been paid for in the state budget, especially in a year of surplus — not through what he called a “tax increase.”

Thurston compared it to a sales tax increase on food.

“This does not sell in my neighborhood, to raise a tax on what most people consider an essential service.”

The Utah Taxpayers Association complained that the state already has the 11th highest cellphone tax rates in the country, said Rusty Cannon, the organization’s vice president.

Tina Matthieu, a former UCA board chairwoman and executive director of the Weber Area 911 Center, defended Utah’s current total emergency fee of $1.32 monthly, which she said is as much as $5 in some states.

The Legislature just two years ago increased the 911 fee by 56-cents monthly, generating an extra $19 million a year for UCA.

One of the concerns among lawmakers was the checkered history of the UCA, which was the victim of a 10-year $1 million embezzlement discovered in 2016. After discovery of the theft, and the resignation of top management, the agency came under scrutiny for numerous problems — including the agency’s lack of transparency by violating open meetings and financial reporting laws and its exemption from state purchasing rules.

Rep. Keven Stratton, R-Orem, even suggested the independent agency be rolled into the state’s Public Safety Department because of its troubled history and continued complaints of poor communication with rural telecommunications networks.

Rep. Lowry Snow, R-Santa Clara, acknowledged the “black eye” UCA had in the past, but said the agency has done a lot since then to clean up its act. And he said the 911 upgrade was one of the most important matters lawmakers dealt with this year. “To maintain this life-saving service, we need to invest in it.”

Recently the American people have been bombarded with stories of human traffickers making their way into the United States, people who can only be stopped by a border wall.

Yet, despite this and many other public condemnations of human trafficking, the Trump administration is doing little to actually solve the problem.

Painting human trafficking as an issue that can be solved with stricter immigration policies discounts the fact that traffickers are often family members, not foreign invaders.

Utah, and the United States, must take a stronger stand on both national and international human trafficking, and avoid narrowing our perception of the issue to a one-size-fits-all, concrete-and-steel-beam solution.

Isy Pacini, South Salt Lake

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My wife and I just got back from spring training baseball in Arizona. Along the way we stayed in several cities and towns, each smaller than Salt Lake City in population. I was amazed to see that the local newspapers in almost all of these locations carried all the daily major league baseball box scores. Is it possible The Salt Lake Tribune might be able to fit in just one box score each day?

Mike Altieri, Heber City

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“Why do Utah legislators not want to help people in need of health care?”

A thanks to the U. of U. social work students whose op-ed in the March 31 Tribune asked the above question.

For a primary care doctor caring for poor people, this is not some abstract, political question. In the last six years the Utah Legislature has turned down somewhere between 2 billion and 4 billion (that’s billion with a "B") Utah taxpayer dollars coming back to Utah to pay for health care for the poor. (The exact amount is illusive.) More recently, they have chosen to ignore their constituents’ mandate for a full Medicaid expansion.

Why? Let me give you the legislators stated answers and then what I think are the real reasons.

Legislators say:

1. “We can not afford to pay for our portion of the cost.”

Throw that one out right away. The state’s share of the expansion would have been zero for the first three years and 10 percent after that. The influx of those billions of dollars would have generated enough economic activity to generate tax revenue to cover much of this cost. Savings on the the state’s on-going Medicaid and charity care costs would have covered most of the rest.

2. “Medicaid is a program fraught with waste and abuse.”

Any large, complex program will have some waste or abuse. As a Medicaid provider I never saw waste or abuse. More important, audits of Medicaid have not shown substantial waste or abuse. This argument is simply cover for those who feel any “entitlement” program is bad - no matter who it helps.

3. “People already have access. Its called the emergency room.”

I will get the best care in the world if I have a massive stroke and go to the ER. However, that ER would not have given me a $4 a month prescription for the blood pressure med that could have prevented that stroke. Guess the acute/long term/disability costs for that stroke. It’s that simple.

4. “The federal government is not dependable. If we expanded our Medicaid program, the feds will back out and we’ll be left holding the bag.”

Come on, now. At the bequest of Utah and other conservative states, the Supreme Court ruled that states didn’t have to expand Medicaid. If the feds had reneged, the Legislature could have shut it down. In the interim a lot of people could have received needed health care.

5. " Medicaid costs will be skyrocketing."

Medicaid is a state administered program. Our Legislature takes pride in its innovative and intelligent administration of state monies. Imagine the opportunity we had 6 years ago to expand our Medicaid program and demonstrate to the country the ability of Utah to provide cost-effective universal health care coverage. It can be done. In fact every other developed country in the world has done just that. Instead our legislature has been busy thinking of reasons it can’t be done.

Real Reasons

1. Politics. Blocking, destroying and discrediting anything the Obama administration did became the highest priority for many conservative politicians. Even more important than helping the poor.

2. Lack of empathy. This is something you can not fault our legislators for. You can neither learn nor teach empathy. It is acquired through personal experience. I am sure that many of our legislators have empathy for the poor. I simply worry that too many don’t. More people with empathy need to step up and get elected.

3. I got mine. The exact health insurance we buy for our legislators is “none of our business.” As best I can determine, for a relatively small premium and two months of work, they and their families get premium health insurance for the year. If this is incorrect, I apologize. But maybe such information should be public.

There is one argument against expansion that merits a discussion. Full expansion will cover some able-bodied, non-working adults. Over my 45-year career, I have done thousands of disability evaluations. Making a determination of “able-bodied” is at best difficult and sometimes impossible. My experience was that few people were trying to game the system. Also, people vary from month to month on their disability. Moving people on and off that list would be difficult. Have you ever known someone who has stayed in a job they hated to keep their health insurance? Not having a work requirement allows these people some mobility. We just gave our wealthiest citizens a $1.5 trillion dollar windfall. Maybe we can afford to give our poorest citizens some health care security.

Doug Douville, M.D., is a family physician currently working at a charity clinic. He was an Air Force physician for twenty years and was in private practice in West Valley City for 15 years.

Teen suicide was very rare in my father’s time. Back then, everybody in a family who was able-bodied had to work just to survive. Suicide was almost unheard of, as was the word “bipolar.”

Rather than merely sitting your kid down to have a talk about what may be bothering them, how about trying these proven remedies for bored and /or troubled children? Try giving your kids tasks and duties to perform on a regular basis. Today, kids spend too much time on computers and watching TV, giving them too much time dwelling and comparing themselves to others.

Limit them to no more than two hours a day maximum. That means a total of TV and/or computer use. If kept busy enough, most of our kids’ problems would melt away.

Remember the old adage that we learned as kids, “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.”

Ron Overman, West Valley City

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Sidney Draughon got a call from Brigham Young University two days before Christmas.

A man she dated had told the college, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that their relationship broke the Provo school’s strict rules forbidding any sexual touching before marriage. The administrator was calling to ask exactly what she had done.

“She asked questions about my underwear,” Draughon recalled. “She asked, ‘Where did he touch you and how many times?’ She wanted to know everything.”

Draughon had put the call on speaker at her Georgia home. Her mom told her to stop answering, that the questions were too invasive.

“If I don’t answer these questions, I lose my education,” Draughon remembers responding. So her mom left the room, unable to listen any longer, and Draughon kept giving more details to BYU’s Honor Code Office, which would decide if and how she would be disciplined.

In December 2017, the office decided to put her on probation. She wasn’t able to graduate on time because of it.

When she finally got her diploma last fall, Draughon started an anonymous Instagram account to post about her experience with the office and to ask other students to share theirs. It blew up this week — going from 50 followers to nearly 20,000 — a spike that comes after renewed criticism that the private religious university cares more about punishing students than helping them.

The account has also brought new life to a year-old petition to reform how the church’s schools enforce the Honor Code, which prohibits premarital sex, sets certain rules for when and how dating occurs, contains a dress code and prohibits the consumption of alcohol, drugs, coffee and tea. And it’s sparked talk of a possible protest on campus.

Most of the students who are sharing their stories say they support the church, BYU and the campus rules. Their objections focus on how the school handles allegations of misconduct and imposes punishment.

Draughon would like to see the Honor Code Office closed, concerned about the current employees’ approach. Or, in agreement with other students, she’d like changes in the personnel, qualifications and training for those who adjudicate student cases.

Many want to end pressure to report on their peers, a culture that has been largely encouraged up to now, they say, by school and faith leaders. Some say the office should focus on academic integrity, such as cheating.

“Everyone has a story,” Draughon said. “So many people have been affected. But nobody talks about it. … The only problem is the Honor Code Office. It’s not even the Honor Code.”

‘We can do better’

Grant Frazier has never been in trouble with the Honor Code Office. But as he scrolled through Draughon’s Instagram account this week, he felt motivated to take action. He’s planned a sit-in at the university’s Honor Code Office for next Friday afternoon.

"I figured the kids who have had bad experiences are scared of the Honor Code Office," he said. "But I'm a freshman. I have my whole life ahead of me. Why not be the one to fight this?"

An 18-year-old, Frazier describes himself as a good student who loves the church and being a BYU student. And he believes the way the Honor Code is currently enforced goes against the values of the faith.

“I don’t want to do away with the Honor Code,” he said. “I just think we can do it in a Christlike, repentant way.”

The organizers want to do away with anonymous reporting of student misconduct, allowing it only when a student has been the victim of assault or abuse. They want students to be able to bring in peer and faculty witnesses during the disciplinary process, and they want the Honor Code Office to operate with the understanding that students will make mistakes.

“We think that it's a privilege [to attend BYU], but we think we can do better," he said.

BYU officials confirmed Thursday that they've contacted several students — Frazier said he's one of them — to talk about their concerns.

“We’ve seen the conversations this week about the Honor Code Office,” officials said in a Thursday post on Twitter. “We love our students and alums and how much they care about BYU. These messages are leading to constructive dialogue between students and the leadership of the Honor Code Office.”

If the discussions go well, there's a chance that Frazier will cancel the sit-in, he said.

BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said Thursday the university is aware of both the Instagram page created by Draughon and the petition for change. She said the university is always seeking input from students but declined to make any further statement.

The petition — which raises many of the same issues students are discussing online this week — had gathered just a few thousand signatures after its initial launch a year ago.

It started to gain some traction last month after several former BYU athletes took to social media expressing their frustration with the way the school has handled investigations into student misconduct. Those former athletes were responding to a Feb. 28 article in The Salt Lake Tribune that detailed how state investigators found that a former BYU police lieutenant looked at private reports created by other Utah County law enforcement agencies and passed information to university officials — including those working in the Honor Code Office.

As part of sweeping reform in 2016, BYU granted amnesty for Honor Code violations to students reporting sexual abuse. Some students said BYU had disciplined them if they were violating the code at the time they were allegedly assaulted; others said they did not report sex crimes because they feared such punishment.

Some faculty have said they’re ready for further change. Political science professor Adam Brown posted Thursday after looking at the Instagram account that he loves the university and sees “its tremendous potential to do good.”

But, he added, "we should never be so at ‘ease in Zion’ as to overlook all these concerning comments.”

110 stories

When the Honor Code Office called Draughon about her relationship, it was her second time being questioned.

In May 2015, she got her first call, as an official asked her to come in and speak with an Honor Code administrator without explaining the allegations. As she walked into the office, she said, there were two papers laid out on a table: a picture of Draughon with some friends on a summer vacation and a printout of a post on Twitter that she had “liked.” Both had happened years earlier.

“Can you explain these?” the administrator asked. All Draughon could think was, “How did they find these?”

The tweet included a crude word to describe attractive men walking around Temple Square. She had found it funny while she was in high school, about three years earlier. She hadn’t posted it or even shared it. And the photo was of her with her cousin and some other girls. They were “dressed immodestly,” she was told, and a man from her hometown had sent the picture and the “liked” tweet to the school out of concern.

“I felt so violated,” said Draughon, now 24. “They told me, ‘It doesn’t matter how you got caught, it matters that the Spirit wanted you to get caught.’”

She was put on probation for the first time, and was blocked from signing up for classes without permission. She was required her to complete 30 hours of community service a month, study her scriptures, attend church talks on campus and meet with an Honor Code staffer periodically. She shared with The Salt Lake Tribune emails sent to her by the office.

So far, she’s posted 110 stories on the Instagram page @honorcodestories. And she’s got at least another 400 in her inbox.

“Every time I walked out of that office I wanted to throw up and pass out,” she said. “You’re constantly terrified. You just think about it 25 hours a day.”

Her mom, Bonnie Draughon, said she’s been disappointed with how the school has handled the cases and how much control they had over her daughter’s future. If Draughon violated any of the probation requirements, she could be kicked out of school and lose her campus job. If her roommate accused her of coming home too late, she could be questioned again.

“The way they treated her was awful, telling her they didn’t believe her,” Bonnie Draughon said. “I was flabbergasted that some lady was asking details about her sex life over the phone.”

Bonnie Draughon said her sister had a similar experience with the Honor Code Office about 20 years ago. “This is a long time coming. Nobody has ever done anything about it,” she said. “Finally it just can’t go on any more.”

Other campuses impacted

The pressure on students to inform on each other is overt at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, one student said. BYU-Idaho is another one of the four colleges operated by the church.

At her student ward’s first worship service last fall, a congregation leader "started talking about how it's really important to follow the Honor Code, which, I agree with the Honor Code as a set of rules," the student said.

But the ward leader didn't stop there, she said. "He went into specifics on how to report students who aren't following the Honor Code, how we need to watch our roommates, and if they mess up we need to report them," she said.

The student said she was reported to her bishop, by her roommate, for "passionate kissing" and for returning to her room after the school's midnight curfew.

The bishop began the conversation cryptically, she said, by asking whether she would report a roommate for breaking curfew. "He got really mad" when she told him she would not, the student said.

"He told me it was my responsibility to report my roommates if they were out past curfew or if they were breaking Honor Code, and I was breaking Honor Code if I didn't report my roommates."

The bishop told the student she was "lucky" her violations had been reported to him rather than to the Honor Code Office — and "if I was reported for anything at all or if I was caught one more time kissing or breaking curfew, I would be expelled."

A previous roommate also reported her to a bishop for “immodesty” because she had worn running shorts — inside their apartment, she said. The woman shared her current student ID, but asked to not be identified, fearing reprisals.

Reporting to bishops can have the same effect as reporting to the Honor Code Office because bishops can pass reports on to Honor Code enforcers or withdraw a student's ecclesiastical endorsements, effectively kicking them out of the school.

At BYU-Idaho, the very first item on the school's online reporting form offers anonymity to informers. At BYU-Hawaii, the online form for Honor Code violation reports asks for informers' names and contact information, but notes that informers don’t have to identify themselves.

LDS Business College in Salt Lake City “generally does not investigate reports given by anyone unwilling to identify himself or herself” but may investigate anonymous reports at the discretion of the Honor Code Office. BYU in Provo asks informers to identify themselves.

‘A toxic culture’

Many of the stories posted on the Honor Code Instagram account start with wording like, “My roommate turned me in …”

Several students who talked to The Tribune said they were encouraged to report peers to the office without confronting or alerting them. That’s a big part of what many students want to change.

“It creates a lot of aspects of a toxic culture,” said one former Provo student who left BYU after the office suspended him for eight months. “That threat of turning someone in, that can enable abusive situations and behaviors.”

The student has since enrolled at the University of Utah and asked not to be identified because his parents don’t know about his transfer; the pressure to be in good standing with the church, he added, is far-reaching.

He was disciplined last May after he “hooked up” with another student in BYU-approved apartments. The girl’s friend reported them. That report, he said, “jeopardized my education.”

He shared with The Tribune a letter the school sent to him that included his offenses and punishments, including a temporary ban on enrolling in classes.

Discipline at BYU typically occurs after a student has talked with one of the five investigators in the office. That group then makes a recommendation to the dean of students, who makes the final call. Punishment can include probation, a short-term suspension, a full suspension (which includes eviction from BYU housing) or expulsion.

Another student, a freshman at the Provo campus, said she had been using a legal cannabis compound to relieve her anxiety. Her parents knew about it, and she’d gotten permission from her bishop. But her roommates turned her in to the Honor Code Office after they saw her using a vaporizer for the oils.

She met with an office investigator at the end of March and doesn’t have a decision in her case — even though she no longer uses CBD products on campus.

“I have no clue what’s going to happen,” she said. “I’m scared of any sort of repercussions.”

‘We’re all adults'

Student enthusiasm for reporting each others' offenses may be particularly disadvantageous for those who come from families and communities whose norms differ from those celebrated at church-owned schools, said Joslin Keim, who attended BYU-Idaho for about a year beginning in fall 2017.

Keim was a convert to the church when she moved to Rexburg from "liberal-bubble" Seattle, where there was a vibrant LGBTQ community and pot had been legal since she was in middle school.

She said she expected to find a spectrum of orthodoxy on campus — "Chill people, Jack Mormons, Peter Priesthoods and Molly Mormons." Instead she found herself in a far more conservative campus community than she had anticipated.

Keim gradually picked up on the strictness of certain norms. For example: "Better make sure I don't have sex because that'll get me kicked out," she said. "I'd heard of friends doing that and getting kicked out."

But when someone offered her marijuana, she said, "I thought, 'Oh, it's not a huge deal.' I come from Seattle. It's legal here. I had never really seen it as a bad drug.”

About the same time Keim tried pot, she came out as bisexual.

Keim's roommates reported her to the school. Campus officials disciplined her for using pot, adding: "We're also aware you came out as bisexual. It's making your roommates very uncomfortable. They think you're sexually attracted to them," she said.

"I felt very blindsided," she said — first that pot and bisexuality would be considered serious enough to get her suspended. She transferred to a community college in Seattle.

It also hadn't occurred to her that friends would feel incentivized to inform on each other for what she saw as minor offenses. What was the upside to reporting her to the school, rather than telling her they were uncomfortable?

"When you have issues with someone you should directly confront them,” she said. “We’re all adults.”

A neon green headband with a fuchsia bow and matching hot pink gloves made figure skater Marci Richards easy to spot as she glided across the ice at the Salt Lake City Sports Complex.

But Richards, a part-time Utah resident and Milwaukee native, stood out for another reason: At 73, she is a “super-ager,” defying stereotypes in a sport usually reserved for youngsters.

“It’s musical and artistic, and it keeps my body in shape," said Richards, who didn’t start ice skating until her mid-50s as a way to rehabilitate after a skiing injury. The exercise not only strengthened her knees, she said, but also gave her a mantra to live by: “Glide joyfully through life.”

Richards is one of 30 competitors in the 66-and-older division at the U.S. Adult Figure Skating Championships, being held this week.

The competition — which attracted nearly 400 participants ages 21 to 80 — provides adult skaters an opportunity to compete among their peers, said Lexi Rohner, who lives in the Salt Lake City area and is the national vice chairwoman for adult skating competitions.

Rohner said some of the skaters have competed on the national and international levels in their youth — but want to continue in the sport as adults — while others picked it up later in life for heath reasons or just for fun. Ice skating is a low-impact, aerobic workout that helps with balance.

For the four-day event, that continues through Saturday at the Salt Lake City Sports Complex, 645 S. Guardsman Way, competitors are divided into five age groups, with the youngest being 21-35 and the oldest 66-plus — all age brackets have two ability tracks (masters and adults).

Skaters compete in the traditional singles, pairs and ice dance categories, as well as dramatic entertainment and light entertainment divisions. In the two latter categories, skaters usually forgo the athletic jumps and spins, and instead showcase their personality with music, props and costumes.

“It’s challenging and gives you goals to work on,” explained Barb Foley, 71, of Orland Park, Ill., who has planned a routine to the music of “Mary Poppins." But, at the same time, “It’s fun developing the routines and coming up with the costumes.”

On Friday and Saturday, the public can watch the competition that continues all day until 9 p.m. Tickets are available at the door for $15 per person. Discounts are available for veterans and seniors; children 6 and under are free.

Nathan Chen, the two-time and reigning World Champion, Olympian and Salt Lake City native, will also make an appearance Saturday.

Since the competition began in 1993, the adult championships have involved nearly 11,000 competitors, including 637 in the 66 and over category, Rohner said. Seven skaters at this year’s event have competed in all 25 competitions.

Reuniting with the same skaters year after year and developing friendships is the best part of the event for some.

“It’s really unlike any other skating competition because of the camaraderie,” said Aristeo Brito, the chief referee. “It truly is a community.”

This will be the third time San Jose resident Connie Curry — who, at 80, is the oldest competitor — has participated. Curry was 60 when she bought her first pair of skates and signed up for a group lesson. She now practices four times a week, sometimes three hours a day.

“It’s addicting,” she said. “I feel so healthy and happy to be able to skate.”

Her coach is Canadian ice dancer John Dowding. He, along with his partner, Lorna Wighton, won the Canadian Figure Skating Championships three times in the late 1970s.

Curry performed an ice dance with Dowding that included several lifts during the opening ceremonies of the adult championships. She also competed in the dramatic entertainment category to the music from the ballet “Giselle," as well as light entertainment category to “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” from the “Sound of Music.”

“I feel like I’m blazing a trail for everyone behind me,” said Curry, who will receive the Yvonne M. Dowlen Trophy for being the oldest competitor. All athletes 71 and older will receive the Skate Forever Young Award.

Curry — who also started playing banjo at 73 — said when she was growing up, organized sports were nonexistent for girls. “We didn’t have the opportunities they do now," she said. Indeed, Title IX was still years from being enacted.

“I guess I’m catching up,” she joked. “I’ll have to live to be 110 to get it all in.”