RG: Rather than it being for the purpose of benefiting the students themselves. At Oxford University, Mackenzie Fierceton will conduct research on the "foster care-to-prison" pipeline. Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, claimed she was from a poor background and grew up in foster care when she actually attended private school By Phoebe Southworth 13 January 2022 8:00pm Mackenzie. [2], Two weeks after the New Yorker article was published, Fierceton gave an interview to The Intercept's Ryan Grim for an installment of the Deconstructed podcast. Fierceton is the 31st Penn student to be chosen as a Rhodes Scholar since the distinguished program's start in 1902. The New Yorker reported it was written by an anonymous sender who displayed a great deal of familiarity with Mackenzies childhood that showed Mackenzie engaging in typical upper middle-class childhood activities, like horseback riding and going to the beach.. And I started interviewing people who were in the class where he died and who were in nearby classes where he died, who knew him, and paramedics who were Penn paramedics and just as many people as I could. Mackenzie Morrison was born Mackenzie Terrell but took her mother's name after her father, Billy Terrell, who worked in soap operas, left. There, she wandered the hallways until she found the history teacher, and collapsed. Or do you think that the wheels were already in motion before that? ", However, in its report, Penn notes that Fierceton had, in an essay (which it allows may not have actually been submitted) for her application for a travel, The Rhodes report acknowledged her documentation of an email she wrote to a reporter at the, Penn's investigation noted that even if Fierceton had been referring to the Chesterfield police rather than the. And, in this case, almost everyone who was involved in the university administration are upper middle class or very wealthy, highly academically educated white women. Its virtually almost an unknown phenomena or to people who are working in the field, its certainly known, but theres been very little research on it, which partially complicates my Ph.D., because theres so little to draw upon. [2], Shortly after the Rhodes investigation began, Rafaelle was informed that Penn was proposing to revoke Fierceton's bachelors on the grounds of her apparent self-misrepresentation. [3] "Mackenzie may have centered certain aspects of her background to the exclusion of othersfor reasons we are certain she feels are validin a way that creates a misimpression," the report said. And I think its true. The prosecutor eventually dropped the charges and the arrest record was expunged. Again following the advice of her college counselor, she did not identify her parents on her application, since she was estranged from both of them (she describes them both as "biological"[3][2]). And there was also the added threat that they would report me to the federal government for wire fraud if I didnt, again, withdraw from the Rhodes and sign this NDA. So that was, I think later on that specific line came into question. Is that just an interpretation or did they say anything that suggested to you that the fact that you had gone to a private school and grown up in an upper-middle-class situation meant that you could never at any point consider yourself low-income? RG: who was, I believe now, the acting provost. he asked in the first. 2020 College graduate Mackenzie Fierceton (Photo from Mackenzie Fierceton). Our producer is Zach Young. Rather than it being for the purpose of benefiting the students themselves. So Im not sure how much could have been missing. A week later, Brandt interviewed Morrison again at the police station; this time she said that her daughter had injured herself, saying "I guess she has more problems than I thought." In the presence of her mother that night at their house, Mackenzie repeated the same story to a visiting caseworker, who appeared to accept it. Her last set of foster parents had had a baby and she felt less a part of their lives. So the Rhodes Trust ended up after their quote-investigation, and I submitted all the evidence, they ended up still recommending that my scholarship be rescinded, uh, but I had another opportunity to respond to their report, which I absolutely wanted to do. Our greatest desire is that Mackenzie chooses to live a happy, healthy, honest, and productive life, using her extraordinary gifts for the highest good." Our focus is not on the debate it reviews over Mackenzie Fierceton's accounts of her life, though we affirm her integrity. MF: No, I found it before. That is when I would trace it back to. But its interesting because most of the questions are about these applications and then the second half is when it turns to these questions of the abuse. And so, Mackenzie, you and I were just talking offline. And I asked again and just said: Ive had different experiences of harassment for the last four years at Penn. RG: Like, those two things dont fit together. "[1]:119, Dismissal of mother's charges and expurgation of records, Role in wrongful death suit against university, In its response to Fierceton's suit, Penn quotes Fierceton as telling police as soon as they entered her hospital room after her later injury about her diary and that it would tell them everything they would need to know. And so where is your story now? And where are you at school? And then the other question was: Are you the first in your family to attend college? [2], Almost three months later, The New Yorker ran a longer article about Fierceton, which had taken the magazine eight months to report and fact-check. MF: So those questions really came later. Then the Philly paramedics couldnt figure out how to get to the building and then they couldnt get me out. Mackenzie Fierceton, 23, originally from St. Louis, Missouri, possesses a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and planned to utilize the scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in social . She arrives as a new student at Erinsborough High School and is connected to the . "[2], In December, an anonymous 22-page letter was sent to the U.S. office of the Rhodes Trust, which administers the scholarship program. She was abused, but there is not enough blood." [2], Fierceton refused, and a week before she withdrew from the Rhodes Scholarship, Penn's Office of Student Conduct (OSC) notified Fierceton it, too, would be investigating. So that was what the actual poem and personal statement was about [laughs.] My understanding is there were two anonymous emails. [Laughs.]. And she quickly got interest of a book deal because she was obviously such a great writer. RG: Interesting. She was one of only 32 high school students selected from a pool of 2300 applicants. A former teacher in elementary school recalled that in one of those calls, Morrison made a reference to an earlier discussion of Fierceton's mental illness; the teacher did not remember any such conversation. And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . I reached out for a response to the University of Pennsylvania and also Provost Beth Winkelstein and General Counsel Wendy White for a response, as well as to Mackenzies biological mother. That was my personal statement. In The New Yorker article, one teacher had written: She showed up at my classroom door with a bloodied and battered face and then fainted., And then, Rachel Aviv, the reporter also quotes Sherry McClain, who was a nurse who was assigned to you, she said: She had two black eyes, and her hair was full of blood. verbally. You know, I honestly dont know. "We have concluded that there is a basis for serious concern and that further investigation by the Rhodes Committee may be appropriate", she wrote. He died after a medical emergency in a basement of UPenn's Caster Building in 2018. And what area of it are you going to explore with your Ph.D.? So therefore that doesnt fit their understanding of low-income, despite the fact that your mother was no longer your legal guardian, youre a ward of the state. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of. That is when I would trace it back to. Yeah. Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. RG: Right. Why would I do that? On Saturday afternoon, Fierceton said she found herself in a Zoom meeting for several hours with 10 other finalists from this region. ", Morrison said. Did they make that threat in writing or was that . She petitioned the court, and was able to successfully have her name removed, with a judge ruling that there wasnt enough evidence to substantiate the abuse allegations specifically, saying, While it is possible that Petitioner was the cause of the alleged injuries, the court cannot make that finding by a preponderance of the evidence based on the evidence presented.. Mhmm. [2] Ruderman's story, published the next day, began:[13]. And so they had to see some benefit to them in doing this. We want to think of it as: If you were ever rich, youre always rich; if youre ever poor, youre always poor. She told Brandt it was her mother, and asked her to keep Morrison from coming to her room. "[2], On her application, Fierceton recounted her background and the unexpected way it led to her becoming a foster child. [1]:111112, In her Intercept interview, Grim recounts how this was reported in The New Yorker and asks "So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use?" It was: Shes a spoiled little brat. [1]:95, Judge Kristine Allen Kerr ultimately held for Morrison. She feared that her mother had inflicted the injuries, perhaps out of jealousy that Lovelace was attracted to her, even as it seemed to Fierceton that Morrison was "offering [her] up to him on a silver platter". Thank you so much for having me. As an anonymous letter writer revealed, however, she was also the privately educated child of a radiologist, brought up in an affluent suburb. And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? so that people have the background there. And so, yes, if the student, then, is no longer useful, I could imagine it turning. Thank you so much for having me. And then it just launched into the first half being a line-by-line it felt like interrogation of my applications. RG: And it has, has she stuck by that? Like what does Penn say when you tell them: Hey, the Penn official who helped me fill this out said that these are the categories that I fit. They had done their own investigation again, quotes on investigation and then I had submitted over a hundred pages of documents to them. One possible explanation for this depressing story is that Mackenzie Fierceton fraudulently accused her own mother of gravely abusing and attempting to kill her, spent 22 days in the hospital to . Cause then you cant think that it could be you. And then The New Yorker adds in parentheses that a Penn spokesperson says: Yeah, well, thats not the definition that we use. Even though I had, again, written statements from two ICU nurses who took care of me saying: Yes, there was blood, [laughs] theres photographs, and there still was the argument of like, there wasnt enough blood or your face wasnt so distorted you could couldnt tell who you were. So, yes, an article came out in the local paper saying that she had been arrested. And then to be so unanimously disbelieved and, at that point, this article was like a paragraph and a half. And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. In The New Yorker piece, a nurse assigned to Mackenzie is quoted as saying, She had two black eyes, and her hair was full of blood. Fierceton earned her bachelor's degree in political science from the College of Arts & Sciences and is . And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. While Kerr noted that Fierceton's three weeks in the hospital was far longer than might be expected given the bruises that led to her admission, she also noted the absence of injuries to Fierceton's back despite having reportedly fallen or being thrown downstairs. Fierceton wrote to SP2 dean Sara Bachman complaining about the interview, saying she felt "worthlessness, hopelessness, and shame" for a week afterwards. So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. The University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday announced it will stop withholding a master's degree from Mackenzie Fierceton, the former student at the center of a recent New Yorker magazine. She didnt even know what building he had died in. Yes. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? I want to talk about where you think that pushback came from. She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. I had no idea what she already knew. Because processes become Kafkaesque very quickly. Penn, by questioning so much of Fierceton's story, was making itself "complicit in a long campaign of continuing abuse", she added. There was, yes, disagreement, because I said there was blood in my hair in the essay, they said there wasnt enough blood or there wasnt blood or something. Fierceton believes it was likely sent by Morrison or one of her close relatives. [2], Brandt interviewed Morrison, who described herself and her daughter as "two peas in a pod". She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. And then the other question was: Are you the first in your family to attend college? First of all, thats one box? So the students had to form a human chain from the first floor down to the basement where all our classes are to relay instructions from the paramedics, the Philadelphia paramedics, to the professor who was, to my understanding, performing CPR. "[2][j], The evening the story ran, Ruderman called Fierceton back and told her she had received some anonymously written emails casting doubt on what she had written. I think they do have a richer experience if they have more diversity around them, but that is more the point. "While it is possible that [she] was the cause of the alleged injuries," she wrote a month afterward, "the court cannot make that finding by a preponderance of the evidence based on the evidence presented." The award brings the number of Penn Rhodes Scholars to 31 since the scholarship's inception in 1902. [4] Within days, the father of one of Fierceton's Whitfield friends, and a high-school classmate using an anonymous email, contacted Penn to inform them she had apparently misrepresented herself and had actually spent most of her childhood in her mother's home in an affluent West County suburb of St. Louis. And now they have to face the fact that someone who looks like them, who shares all these identities with them, could be the source of all of this harm. And still, it was just like: Nope. In 2020, former foster child Mackenzie Fierceton received a Rhodes Scholarship as a self-identified first generation, low income student at the University of Pennsylvania. "She was a foster child, but not for long enough. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. RG: And because you were not just low-income, actually no income, other than the jobs that you were working nobody has complained about the low-income one, right? She applied to a program at Penn's School of Social Policy and Practice (commonly referred to at Penn as SP2) that would allow her to begin graduate studies while still an undergraduate, so she could graduate with a master's degree in the field a year after completing her undergraduate degree. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. Like questioning: How much blood? While that was not literally true, Penn's own definition of an FGLI student included those who have a "strained or limited" relationship with a parent who has graduated from college. 207 1,590 6,062 Show this thread Mackenzie Fierceton @MFierceton Aug 8 Will never not make my day to see this on the shelf. Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. ")[3], The OSC report also concluded that nothing in her academic record warranted the revocation of either degree. Have you ever heard of her case? RG: Yeah. MF: So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. Nor is she obligated to meet their expectations of her. And I ultimately didnt end up responding because I got a serious threats from Penn that if I didnt withdraw that they were going to come after my undergrad degree, and launch proceedings to revoke my undergrad degree, and never give me my M.S.W which I was supposed to graduate with in May 2021, I have not yet received that diploma if I didnt withdraw from the Rhodes and sign an NDA. RG: Did they make that threat in writing or was that . "I had so much anger and grief, and I didn't want them to be affiliated in any way with this new life I was building. And Im like: I dont know what else I could give them that would possibly convince them if their belief is as a 15-year-old, 16-year-old was journaling about my experience of abuse and hiding it in an air vent, and it was actually secretly all a plan to like accuse my mother of abuse and go into foster care so I could have a sad story. And like: Why are you considered an independent student? Uh, my lawyer. "She was falling apart under the academic stresses at school and was exhausted, and I believe looking for an out." You didnt grow up in crumbling projects your entire life. Beth Winkelstein, at the time Penn's deputy provost, signed off on her application for the school, writing that "Mackenzie understands what it is like to be an at-risk youth, and she is determined to re-make the systems that block rather than facilitate success. And Ive brought my mentor with me. Interesting. RG: And so if its a well-educated white girl from a private school, thats way too close to home for a lot of these elites. [2], Wendy Ruderman, a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, called Fierceton to interview her for a story about the scholarship. Mackenzie Fierceton has lost her Rhodes Scholarship and her University of Pennsylvania master's degree is being held after an anonymous tipster called out alleged inaccuracies in her school. Enough bruises? And at the time I was more in panic mode than like, let me step back and look at this logically, theres absolutely no case, this is an intimidation tactic to try to silence me and sign this NDA and withdraw from the Rhodes and agree to whatever terms they wanted me to agree to you. But teachers noticed that Fierceton often seemed physically uncomfortable in her mother's presence, and a close friend noted that she was often injured. RG: as a kid. [14], The publicity led 150 Penn students to stage a walkout from classes to demonstrate in support of Fierceton. [3], Before that happened, Fierceton withdrew from the scholarship on her own. But I think a lot of it stems from the current policies and practices of federal and local funding and what kind of programs theyre funding for kids. And I turned over all this information to his widow. Cause Ive just wanted to go on with my life and, you know, live it. I think youre right. MF: Absolutely. And that feels like one of them where it feels like the system is willfully misunderstanding reality in order to bend it in their direction. And I dont remember exactly what their statement was, but they disputed it. Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Teachers at Whitfield who had been supportive while she was there dropped out of touch. And do you know Linda Tirado? RG: So you applied for your masters in social work and there was a question of whether to check the, what Ive learned is called the FGLI box: first-generation, low-income. [Laughs.]. Yeah. RG: Right. Morrison told White in an email. I n November 2020, University of Pennsylvania graduate student Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, won the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse., No, I found it before. Like one of them was describing a biological child in a house as another foster child, and something about a half-brother or something.What were those and how were those errors kind of deployed against you? Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. Since we began the Reshuffled journey, any mention of foster care grabs my attention, the same with Tracy. And I havent been on any of the Penn websites. [2] Fierceton and her mentor reconstructed the conversation and transcribed it; the university has claimed it is inaccurate but the mentor stands by it. Enough blood? But they just assumed theres no way that it could have happened. Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Mackenzie Fierceton is the child of a doctor who attended a private prep school in a wealthy suburb. So one question was: Are you from a low-income family? And I was in a kind of unique situation where I applied to grad school at the beginning of my sophomore year of college, because I sub-matriculated. RG: And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . And it has, has she stuck by that? I tried to help as much as I could. She definitely asked some questions about it. And then she hired a law firm and eventually they were doing their own investigation for several months. Medical records, records from child welfare services, corroborating letters from detectives and lawyers and elementary, middle, and high school teachers, childhood friends, professors basically everyone who had known me. Fierceton described herself as a first-generation college applicant who came from a low-income, foster-care background. Yeah, I mean, so that specific definition wasnt public until 2018. And still, it was just like: Nope. Fierceton joins Ryan Grim to discuss the saga of her battle with UPenn and why the Ivy Leagueinstitution seems to have so much trouble recognizing the complexity of poverty in America. It didnt have any facts of the case. [2], Some of those Morrison talked with did believe her; a classmate of Fierceton's recalled people likening her to the protagonist of the film Gone Girl, about a Missouri woman who disappears in order to avenge herself on an adulterous husband, whom she makes it appear killed her. RG: And so where is your story now? Penn's Office of Student Conduct recommended withholding her master's degree until she paid a fine; both conditions were dropped but a notation about the investigative finding remains in her transcript. Her junior year at Whitfield, a prestigious prep school, Mackenzie showed up to school one day in a terrible state. Its account focused on the Rhodes controversy, discussing her and Driver's suits near the end, and recalling some other recent instances of academic dishonesty, including one 2009 Harvard student whose largely fabricated high school records were only discovered when he had applied for a Rhodes Scholarship. Like, it seemed like an airtight case from my perspective. "Once you do something that the University sees as undermining its quest for power and prestige, it will not think twice about discarding you, humiliating you, and retaliating against you, which is exactly what they did" said one SP2 student in support of Fierceton. And I turned over all this information to his widow. Two weeks into the school year, she realized she had been wrong. [26] In the second, he wrote, "[y]ou could also conclude from Mackenzie Fierceton's story that there is no actual empathy within elite institutions unless you perfectly fit into the trauma hierarchy they have created, which preferences the types of overcoming-adversity stories they can place in a brochure. In addition it offered details of what its own investigation had concluded about Fierceton's childhood and adolescence that led OSC to believe it was likely that she had exaggerated or fabricated outright her claims about her mother. Yes, it may be true that institutions like UPenn give students like Fierceton opportunities because of their story, but that does not mean her narrative is theirs for the taking. The New Yorker reported that Fierceton reported this to Penn's campus police, fearing that her mother had somehow found out where she was living. One of them, to me, felt pretty clear that it was probably from someone in my biological family, because it had photos of me; it had very specific information that very few people would have and I dont think many people would have random childhood photos of me. Mackenzie Fierceton of St. Louis was an Oxford student who had to offer her a Rhodes scholarship after the university caught her lying about her financial condition and her unpleasant teenage years on her application reports. Thats the reality of it, but we dont want to think of it that way. RG: And that feels like one of them where it feels like the system is willfully misunderstanding reality in order to bend it in their direction. In November 2020, Mackenzie Fierceton was one of just 32 students to be awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. She had begun to remember more about the incident, and while still not certain how it had happened recalled that before it she and her mother had been fighting about Lovelace. Penn's admissions department thus automatically coded Fierceton as a first-generation student, a category it was seeking to increase among its undergraduate population, even though her mother had an advanced degree[2] and her grandfather was a college graduate who had taught at the University of Missouri. [2][k], While the trust had come to seriously doubt Fierceton's claims about the severity of her injuries, OSC declined to make a determination on that. The university's police did not know at first where the building was and the city's paramedics did not know how to get to it. Whereas a social worker comes into a poor home and looks around and sees just the normal poverty that our system has foisted on people and says: Oh, well, clearly this is somebody that needs to be stripped out of here. Or sociology doing this an out. it that way her own a new student at Erinsborough High school selected... 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