Salt Lake City School District launches “Dignity Initiative” to reduce divisiveness and improve school culture

The Salt Lake City School District held a Unity Summit on November 15 as part of efforts to improve community culture. (Jason Olsen, Salt Lake City School District)It's no secret that we live in a polarized, deeply divided society, or as social scientist and professor Arthur C. Brooks describes it, a “culture of contempt” driven by an “outrage industrial complex.”

On November 15, the leadership of the Salt Lake City School District (SLCSD) held a Unity Summit as part of a new initiative to foster healthy disagreement by emphasizing dignity and respect, as a way of combating this culture of contempt in schools, and with a goal of positively impacting society at large. 

About 150 student leaders from four district high schools participated in discussion groups and workshops at the Summit at the Utah Capitol building, which was organized in partnership with 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. SLCSD is the ninth-largest district in Utah, with about 25,000 students and 1,300 teachers.

Superintendent Elizabeth Grant took the opportunity to announce the district's implementation of the Dignity Index, a tool developed by an organization called UNITE in 2022. In its pilot project, a trained group of students supported by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and the Hinckley Institute of Politics used the tool to score selections of language from candidate communications in Utah’s mid-term federal congressional races. 

The Index is foundational to the district's Dignity Initiative and its goal to "elevate the discourse" in schools and become known as the first “Dignity District.” 

The Index is an eight-point scale that scores speech along a continuum from contempt to dignity in an unbiased way, enabling participants to analyze words being used in disagreements, identify the language of contempt, and foster higher levels of dignity and respect for others. 

More resources on the Dignity Index and the Dignity Initiative:

• SLCSD Dignity Initiative Main Page
• Infographic: SLCSD Dignity 8-Point Scale
• Infographic: Conflict Resolution and Dignity Affirming Resources
• SLCSD Teacher Resources: Student Activities and Support Plan
• The Dignity Index 
• General Resources from The Dignity Index: Guides, Infographics, Conversation Starters