STATE OF THE STUDENT – Members of ASB, Timby and my fellow Timberwolves. We gather here today under the fortitude of the Oak as a united body of students to meditate on the spirituality of empathy and its utility as a mechanism for surpassing the infinite plane of material values and greed.

Empathy. Em–pa–thy. What is empathy? It is the ability to understand and share the feelings of one another, the fractal web of spidery threads that anchor their dewy ends to individual homosapiens, intertwined through heavy hearts and sympathetic souls to unify us as one body, one being.

E pluribus unum. We are many, and yet, we are one. We share the same challenging examinations that burden our minds for the next week. We share the same desire to sleep and the same procrastination that delays it. We share the same Howler articles. We could not be divided by the forward slash, the mathematical symbol of division that divides even the most indivisible of numbers.

It is here, under the fortitude of the Oak, that I say to this union of the T-Wolves. We must find each other in each other. We must realize that despite our inequivalent schedules, our incongruous hobbies, talents and skills and our dissimilar beliefs and values, we are one. We must be empathetic for the good of the pack.