Penn State and local community members come together with 'dignity for all'

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Now in its fourth year, PA Dignity Day 2025, held on Oct. 15, featured speakers and workshops focused on how to live and lead with dignity.

After participating in this year’s celebration, State College resident Rick Stringer said the day’s message about recognizing the inherent worth of all community members hit home.

“Currently, as a nation, we are very divided, and things like respect and dignity seem to have gone by the wayside,” Stringer said. “So, these voices that are speaking of every person’s inherent worth and dignity, now more than ever, it is important that we hear them and realize that there is still hope.”

Held in partnership with the Borough of State College and Penn State, PA Dignity Day is a local celebration of Global Dignity Day, which began in 2008 as a celebration of unity in the belief that everyone deserves to live a life of dignity. Observed on the third Wednesday of every October, Dignity Day is now celebrated in more than 80 countries.

During the free event, local community members, civic leaders and Penn State faculty, staff and students were invited to share ideas, listen to each other and work together to transform the community into a place where every individual feels safe, seen, heard and valued.

“I learned some things today. It was good to be part of a diverse audience, in terms of age, ethnicity and even thought,” Stringer said. “And we were all engaged together.”

Having diverse community members engage with each other is what PA Dignity Day is all about, said Karen Armstrong, director of inclusion, equity and diversity for Penn State Outreach.

“This means togetherness. It means true inclusion. Everybody’s perspectives are here and are welcome,” Armstrong said. “In our country, people are talking to each other less, and they view each other as good or bad. Dignity Day is important to address that and remedy it so people can come together. Our goal is not to change people’s minds and have people think the same. It is to learn. Civil discourse and civility must be key in that.”

To help foster more civil discourse, Armstrong led a discussion with keynote speaker Donna Hicks, associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and a leading expert on the role of dignity in conflict resolution. Hicks discussed the Dignity Model, which provides a framework for understanding how attention to dignity can help to strengthen relationships, resolve conflicts and make organizations more successful.

Later, a workshop used real-life scenarios to identify how the Dignity Index — a scale for measuring how we talk to each other when we disagree — can help people be more effective leaders, disagree better and enhance culture.

“I hope that people take this model and the idea of treating people with the inherent worth that they are born with and use it just once in their day and also receive that back,” said Chiluvya Zulu, director of diversity, equity and inclusion for the Borough of State College and event co-organizer. “When we are able to feel that and also feel what it is like to be in a contentious moment and then pause and value the person you are talking to and have a conversation, then I think we’ll really transform a lot of the ways we are communicating right now.”

Zulu said the town and gown partnership helps fuel conversations about dignity that will impact the community and beyond in a positive way.

“We are all living in this community, experiencing this community together, just separated by College Avenue. It is always great to be able to be in a room together and have conversations about how our experiences are either similar or different and ways in which we can collaborate to make the world better,” Zulu said.

Having been an active participant in PA Dignity Day since its inception has made an impact on State College Mayor Ezra Nanes’ life, he said, professionally and personally. He said he believes that those who participated in this year’s event will carry what they learned with them and make positive change in the community.

“Dignity is so powerful,” Nanes said. “The more we honor our own dignity and honor it in other people, the more the work will spread. When someone learns about dignity, then they act within the Dignity Model with the people in their network. Then they spread out so it can grow and expand over time and help us address the challenges that we face.”

Learn more about PA Dignity Day and how to get involved.