Our lives are full of choices, and where we start is out of our control. Some of us are born into affluent families with no worries surrounding stability and having basic needs met, and some are born into poverty and are largely expected to figure out a way to survive. However, how we play the cards we are dealt is up to us.
Our fellow Gray Bee, Rob Peace ’98, was not born to a life of privilege. Rob was just like many of us. At Benedict’s, our community put him on a pedestal because he was undeniably resilient, but blended in with the large class of ’98, “[h]e had a sort of quiet confidence about him, and was just like every other kid from Orange,” said classmate Dexter Lopina ’98.
Rob was a Trail Commander for Dr. Ivan Lamourt and Lopina, became Senior Group Leader and was awarded the Presidential Award in his senior year at St. Benedict’s. “While being Senior Group Leader, Rob rarely spoke in a large audience, but when he did, everyone listened because they could feel the importance of his message,” said Lopina, recounting Rob’s time in leadership at The Hive.
The film about Rob’s life, directed and adapted for the screen by Chiwetel Ejiofor, highlighted how Rob was dedicated to his community. The film, not leaving out much detail, showed Rob as a swimmer and water polo player at The Hive, both illustrating his athletic and academic success that set the stage for his collegiate career. After high school, Rob received a scholarship to attend Yale, where he also played water polo. He studied molecular biophysics and biochemistry, in hopes of becoming a cancer researcher.
Rob had immense potential for his life. After his Bachelor’s, Peace was on track to get his master’s degree and continue his research in molecular biology. He had an immense drive to help those who raised him including his parents and friends in his neighborhood. What Rob failed to realize is that he could not take responsibility for them. They chose the life that they lived and the positive and negative consequences that came with it. It is important to support those around you who contributed to your path of success; however, it’s essential to also realize when gratitude for our peers gets conflated into a pressure to “repay” them.
While Rob strived to bridge gaps between different communities, he struggled with the responsibilities put onto him by his community. At St. Benedict’s, we constantly emphasize the importance of community. However, the community must extend beyond a slogan and be felt by its members. As Fr. Ed often says, “If you can’t address the pain that lives inside of you, how can you help others to do so?” The idea of being selfless is praised and regarded as admirable, but selflessness does not mean the absence of boundaries and is only meaningful when still healthy to the individual.
Throughout the film, Ejiofor focuses on Rob’s struggles with selflessness due to his unwavering commitment to his family and community. He drove himself to the end for those around him, and his desire to solve any problem – even ones outside of his control – came at the expense of his future. When Rob’s father goes to jail for a crime that his family is unsure he committed, Rob dedicates every free moment to researching, building a case, and attempting to exonerate him. Although seemingly successful, an appeal from the state would put his father back in jail and have Rob starting over, while trying to maintain his studies at an Ivy League institution. Although centered around his life, the movie indirectly serves as a description of thousands of kids surrounding the cities of Orange, Newark, Irvington, and nearby neighborhoods.
What I got from Ejiofor’s interpretation of Rob’s journey was that inner-city kids like Rob are undeniably exposed to life at a rapid pace, resulting in teenagers feeling a responsibility to address challenges beyond their maturity and lived experience. Throughout the movie’s beginning, the audience is exposed to the tenacity of Rob. His brilliance in math and science led him to understand the differences and similarities of people. Rob Peace had a gift not only with academics but with being able to bridge the gap between different communities. At a young age, he understood the importance of dismantling the separation between different races and communities, emphasizing the value of unity. During his time at Yale, Rob, being one of the only African Americans at the university, felt racial stereotypes unfairly put upon him, just as many of us do. The film focuses on how Rob was confronted with this choice more than once but emphasizes how – even in these impossible situations – his reaction was just that: a choice.
Rob lived his life showing us, we have a choice: to perpetuate distrust and hatred or rise above it. Rob struggled with this inner conflict of challenging this stereotype but still felt the restraint of the responsibility given to him at a young age. Throughout the film, Rob feels obligated, responsible for, and confined to the neighborhood he is in. From his account during his time at Yale and The Hive, Rob had a desire to stay true to himself and what he learned at SBP – build community, understand the other, and live a life you’re proud of. While he could feel the judgment of his privileged peers at Yale, rather than building walls of separation, he strove to expose them to his world and encouraged them to challenge their own biases.
After watching the movie, it became clear to me that we can all see ourselves in different aspects of Rob’s life. We all can learn from him and take the great things that he did in his life as lessons for ourselves, which I think is what our brother and fellow Gray Bee would have wanted. I believe he would also urge us to learn from his mistakes and challenge us to be self-aware so we can avoid following a destructive path.
We don’t have control over others and the choices they make, but making positive choices for ourselves is a positive step forward for our community, as a community is only as good as its members. Staying in a harmful environment takes less courage than leaving it. The movie forces this idea that inner city kids have no way out, as the line, “You can take the kid out of Newark, but you can’t take Newark out of the kid” becomes very present.
We all have a choice, and we’re able to make it based on our own free will. Leaving a community or harmful environment is not abandonment. We must solve the inner conflicts within ourselves and accept opportunities presented to us without feeling the pressure to remove all sense of self. I believe that if Rob could give us any advice today, it would be to have the courage to accept the things we can not change while seeking to change the things we can. I imagine he would tell us to choose ourselves, and not allow self-sacrifice to become self-harm. In the end, Rob’s passion for fixing things beyond his control cost him his life. I hope we learn from him and make the most of the support, guidance, and opportunities we have been given, not only for ourselves, but for his memory as well.
