SALT LAKE CITY — Lindsey Ferrari is standing in the front of a West High School classroom grasping a laptop as she starts quizzing the group of nearly two dozen students in front of her about the Utah state flag.

She starts with a series of simple questions.

"Can anybody even think of it? Can you imagine it? What color is it?" she asks. "What does it have on it?"

The students know it's blue, and one of them says they're certain there's a beehive symbol on it. There is, Ferrari confirms with a nod. However, it quickly becomes clear that's about all they can remember of it when put on the spot.

One student asks if there's an image of a bear, while another mumbles something about stars and stripes, earning a chuckle from his classmates. He's technically not wrong because there are two American flags within the current Utah flag dating back to 1913.

When Ferrari flips her laptop around to reveal a photo of the Utah flag on her screen, there's a collective exhale as if all the lightbulbs in their minds turned on at the same time. They recognize Utah's flag, but there might be a reason they can't remember it.

"It's ugly," one student mutters, though he's not exactly sure why he thinks that.

This is why Ferrari, a consultant for Utah's More Than a Flag initiative, is at the high school on a brisk Monday morning. She's seeking input from this class about what they want Utah's flag to look like, almost as if they are a focus group, as the state wraps up its first phase of collecting designs and ideas for a new state flag.

The students' responses essentially represent what sparked the redesign movement in recent years.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and state leaders contend that the flag is in need of an upgrade because it's bland, forgettable and not representative of the state today.

Young voices matter greatly in this movement, given that nearly one out of every three Utahn was under the age of 18 at the time of the 2020 census.

Ferrari specifically picked the class at West High School because everyone in the classroom comes from a Latin background. She's traveled to classes in the state with more diverse populations so that when the state designs its next flag, it is selecting something that represents the state as a whole.

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Members of the Utah State Flag Task Force say they are thrilled with the thousands of designs they've seen so far. And it's possible a new design will be adopted this year.

However, the More Than a Flag team sent out education kits to teachers and education associations across the state, where students of all ages and backgrounds, from Logan to St. George and Vernal to Blanding, can send feedback on what they believe the flag should look like. This not only allows for representation from the state's youth, but also from each of the state's 29 counties.

"We think it's really important (to include students) because they're the next generation of Utahns who will carry the flag and will use the flag as a symbol of a shared identity," Ferrari said. "So getting to students and young people throughout the state has been a priority of the project."

Young ideas

After a muzzy start learning about the past, the students in Yulliana Novoa's Latinos In Action class at West High enliven when asked about the symbols and ideas that can be incorporated to reflect Utah today.

These students, she explains, are dedicated to community service, Latin culture and finding ways to reach higher education. Since they're invested in the community they live in, they have a holistic understanding of it.

Southern Utah's red rocks and natural arches, the state's mountains and snow, and the Great Salt Lake are symbols they associate with the state. Family, community and welcoming are words they came up with to describe Utah, too.

What Ferrari finds fascinating in these presentations is that almost everyone — regardless of age, gender or background — has reacted the same way. She finds that Utahns light up when they're asked to capture the state with one symbol or idea.

"As soon as people start thinking about the words to define the state's identity and the symbols we use to demonstrate that shared identity, then they get really excited," she said. "What (happens in the classroom) is exactly what we've seen in other kinds of environments with adults."

In the West High classroom, the symbols and words move from conversation to actual designs. Ferrari whisks around the room handing out colored pencils that the students use to draw their own designs in a small 3-by-5-inch box on a blank sheet of paper.

There's a red U — similar to the University of Utah logo — atop blue and yellow bars, used to symbolize the red rocks, blue sky and sunny days in one design. Another features Utah's famed Delicate Arch over a beehive. There are designs featuring dreamcatchers, bees and fruit, as well, during this session.

One design, however, stops Ferrari in her tracks. She holds up a paper with a design featuring a pair of open hands as a symbol of the welcoming and generous nature of Utahns. She says designs like this stand out to her because they offer new ideas that capture Utah today.

This happened in all the other workshops she hosted. In another classroom, a Native American student proposed a basket for the new flag. The basket represents community, industry and resourcefulness that holds everybody together. When that's flipped upside down, it's a beehive that Utah has used to symbolize industry since the pioneers arrived in 1847.

That's the value of young minds.

"Our students are so incredible. They're so creative," Novoa says. "They have amazing ideas and when they're given the opportunity to voice their opinions, they really can enrich our way of thinking (and) our designs for this flag."

When Salt Lake City redesigned its flag in 2020, the two winning designs came from a pair of West High School students. Their ideas were merged into the flag that now flies over the capital city.

With a wealth of ideas already proposed by children among the more than 4,000 designs submitted so far, it's quite possible history will repeat itself with a student somewhere in Utah.

"I would not be surprised at all if the final design of the flag comes from one of our students throughout the state," Ferrari said.

What happens next

Meanwhile, the timeline for the state's flag redesign process is now a bit clearer.

Utah will wrap up its flag design submissions on Friday. That's when the state will turn to a volunteer team of graphic art designers, vexillologists and Utah representatives who will meet three times over the course of the summer, to whittle down the thousands of ideas to a few hundred; and then, eventually, to 20 designs.

The 20 semi-finalists will be unveiled to all Utahns in August for a round of public comment.

The panel of experts will review all the comments in September and select three finalists for the Utah State Flag Task Force to mull over. The task force, which includes Cox, Utah legislators and state cultural representatives, will then pick a design to recommend to the Utah Legislature for adaptation.

It's possible that the legislature will hold a special session to vote on the new Utah flag by the end of the year. If it approves a new flag, the current flag won't be fully retired; it would serve as the official flag of the state governor, joining over a dozen U.S. states with governor flags.

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