| by MARK REYNOLDS PROVIDENCE JOURNAL STAFF WRITER SOUTH KINGSTOWN - Nine years ago, Erick Betancourt shared a jail cell with a young man who had killed and mutilated two Providence men. Betancourt's cellmate and chess partner, Frank Sanchez-Collins, seemed to sense a coaching moment. |
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Sanchez-Collins, then in his early 20s, faced a life prisonsentence with no parole. He repeatedly reminded Betancourt - a convicted narcotics trafficker - that he still had a second chanceto turn his life around.
On Sunday afternoon, Betancourt, a 32-year-old Providence man bound for a prestigious acting school, was among almost 3,000 undergraduates to receive degrees from the University of Rhode Island during sun-splashed commencement ceremonies on
the quadrangle of the university's Kingston campus.
At the podium, many of the event's speakers, including a New York human rights lawyer and novelist, Marlen Suyapa Bodden, urged Betancourt and his classmates to set lofty goals for themselves and to "think big."
Thinking big is the university's motto, and it's a popular theme at graduation, but Bodden said her inspiration had come from Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in "Walden": "... that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
Bodden is an attorney with The Legal Aid Society in New York and author of "The Wedding Gift." A historical novel, published in 2011, the story is about a young slave woman who is treated as a piece of property during a divorce proceeding.
"I challenge you to dream big," Bodden told the class. "Strive to do something incredible." Bodden was a hit during a recent visit to campus.
Governor Chafee had one piece of advice for the class: "no matter what you do, be honest."
So she was invited back to speak at the graduation and to receive an honorary degree in recognition of her writing and her efforts to confront human trafficking, human rights abuses and what she calls "modern-day slavery."
Betancourt didn't think big when he was growing up in Providence's Manton neighborhood.
His father, a drug addict, didn't provide much guidance, he said. By the time he was in middle school, he was failing his classes. He stole cars and developed a reputation in the neighborhood.
At 17, and living in the Bronx, he dropped out of high school. At 20, and back in Rhode Island, he got his general equivalency diploma. But Betancourt couldn't envision himself in college the way that Thoreau might have suggested. He turned to selling drugs. Then, in 2003, Providence police raided his home and caught him with half a kilo of cocaine.Betancourt said that San-chez-Collins and other inmates at the Adult Correctional Institutions steered him away from a life of crime. His mother helped him simply by believing in him.
Betancourt says the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence helped him stay out of trouble after that, giving him a chance to help young gang members learn from the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr.In college, Betancourt fell in love with theater, studying Shakespeare. Now, Betancourt is headed for The Actor's Studio at Pace University, where Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson were once students. After his graduation Sunday, he said he hopes to use acting and theater and skits to reach out to at-risk youths.
The remarks of student commencement speaker, MaryMcGunigal, had made an impression.McGunigal had talked about the gift of time, reminding her classmates of how they had used their time over four years, advising them to make their time count. "Let's stay devoted to our passions," she said, "and the seeds URI has planted within us will blossom ..." McGunigal's speech reminded Betancourt of what he has done with his time since he left prison and what he can still do with the time he has left. It can be much harder to see time as a gift, from the inside of a prison cell.
"In my life," said Betancourt, "I've been able to experience time in a positive way. And get it to be on my side. I'm blessed to be alive and go through that evolution of time." |
Nonviolence Positive Example
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Peace! http://bit.ly/JHdUT0 |
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The Choose Peace Project |
We invite you to the Opening Reception for "Imaging Peace on Thursday June 7th at 12 noon. The reception will be located on floor 3S of the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University located at 154 Angel Street.
