"[27], For the Penn investigation, Fierceton relied on the definition on the webpage for Penn First Plus, the university's support program for FGLI students, which includes the language about the student having a "strained or limited relationship" with the graduate parent. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? [2], Over the middle of 2020, Fierceton became active in the Black Lives Matter protests at Penn. One, Michael Raffaele, said he believed Morrison was trying to leave Fierceton with no other options. So they didnt ask about that in this meeting. But I agreed to come into this Zoom meeting and this was the last day of November 2020. MF: So those questions really came later. 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. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. She bounced from one foster home to the next. So thats the background of him. And that dynamic, I would say, [laughs] probably played a big part in all of this. And if you havent already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. "She was a foster child, but not for long enough. 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.. 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. White, who had apparently drafted the offer, added a sentence to it requiring Fierceton to say she was agreeing to it "voluntarily and without pressure" after she learned that Fierceton was complaining to professors that she felt Penn was pressuring her to do this. And so they had to see some benefit to them in doing this. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? And it has, has she stuck by that? And you experienced that yourself, right? You know, I honestly dont know. And you experienced that yourself, right? And they released this quote-unquote report in April of 2021 with their findings. She didnt know any of the circumstances of his death. "How much does one have to suffer to have value? So Im not sure if it was Penn who reached out to her or vice versa, which I think is also an important question in all of this. RG: And so, like I mentioned earlier, I dont want to go over too much of the history that led up to your battle with Penn and with the Rhodes trust, because people can find that in The New Yorker article that came out recently, you went over that in some pretty decent length; in Katie Courics podcast in a recent interview there. How many people kind of fit that category that you interacted with, and how many kind of fit closer to your category, not just in your own interactions, but also in your research? And did you find this after The New Yorker article was published? She, about 10 years ago, she wrote a comment I think on a Gawker post or something like that that we ended up then re-publishing as an essay at The Huffington Post about, and it was about her life in poverty, and it went viral, millions of people read it, extremely well-written piece. I cant remember if it was in the Rhodes essay or in another essay that, in hindsight, you wouldve tightened up. But its relevant to financial aid and the student should check whatever box is going to give them most access to financial aid, which would be yes to both questions. She was an independent student when she applied. Fierceton finished her Whitfield education on a scholarship while living in foster homes. A 24-year-old Rhodes Scholar has left the prestigious program after being accused of lying about growing up poor, reports say. The 23-year-old planned to use. RG: Rather than it being for the purpose of benefiting the students themselves. Yes, to my lawyer who communicated it to me. This made Fierceton feel as if she were being watched for anything she did that could be used against the state's case by her mother. Our greatest desire is that Mackenzie chooses to live a happy, healthy, honest, and productive life, using her extraordinary gifts for the highest good." "[2], When Fierceton returned to the St. Louis area on vacations and breaks, she stayed with friends. Theres a lot of chaos. I asked specifically about those boxes and the answer I got was again, this was multiple years ago, but it was something along the lines of I dont think that biological parents are relevant to this. Fierceton had apparently made much of her status as a 'first generation, low income' student, an abuse survivor who aged out of foster care. Fierceton believes it was likely sent by Morrison or one of her close relatives. And then instantly people started picking her story apart. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at [emailprotected] Thanks so much! [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. 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. RG: Right. I want to read from The New Yorker article again, it says: The Web site of Penn First Plus, a university program founded in 2018 to support F.G.L.I. Thats not in question. They had done their own investigation again, quotes on investigation and then I had submitted over a hundred pages of documents to them. Yeah, I mean, so that specific definition wasnt public until 2018. Yeah. What happened after you went out of the hospital? Period." [3] In high school there, Fierceton was a model student. 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. In addition to reiterating many of the themes of comments made by her and her supporters in the previous articles, including criticism of the Rhodes and Penn investigations (the former of which Grim noted she was putting air quotes around when she mentioned it), she expressed a belief that her story had triggered a defensive anxiety in women like Finkelstein and White:[4]. Her supporters at Penn have called for the university's acting provost, Beth Winkelstein, to be held accountable for her role in the investigation, which has been characterized as a continuation of the abuse. "[2], Fierceton was one of 15 freshmen made Civic Scholars, a program focused on social justice and community service, with an emphasis on confronting the intersections of identity and privilege. [2][5] It did not disclose that it had done so until March. The court had ordered Fierceton and Morrison into family therapy, but the former was too afraid of the latter to do it. RG: Or whatever our kind of contemporary version of it is. 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. Mackenzie is currently suing the university. And how much confidence do you have that that anonymous complainer was Carrie, your biological mother. 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. The nurse also reported bruises all over Fierceton's body, in different stages of healing, considered an indicator of possible physical abuse. No, I cant. 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. I tried to help as much as I could. Later, another Whitfield parent Morrison had talked to told this woman that she believed Fierceton had done this to get admitted to an Ivy League college, an idea which she found preposterous. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. In any event, The University of Oxford, where Mackenzies doing her Ph.D., has remained supportive, and in the wake of The New Yorker investigation, and the resulting protests from students and faculty, Penn lifted the hold on her degree. Its hard to say. It was more, I think, in the times after and the months after where I ended up like giving different medical records and all of these things to corroborate my account, but there were a few questions that were very specific to what had happened. Within days of the article being published, the universitys general counsel was in touch with Mackenzies mother. 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., RG: 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. Right. So now Im looking at one American city and one English city and comparing the experiences of youth who crossed over from the child welfare system to the criminal justice system in both of those cities and kind of how the geopolitical environment and local policies and practices might impact the rate of youth crossing over and their experiences.Then its going to be a qualitative study in just really trying to understand their experiences from their voices, which is something that I often find missing from research. And then as the different internships, and then I went to get my masters in social work and all of this happened, I started to see that continue in different capacities while I was in different roles, seeing that theme in this relationship between foster care and the criminal justice system. [2], Brandt interviewed Morrison, who described herself and her daughter as "two peas in a pod". But it doesnt mean you were always low-income, just that you are now. And if you read it aloud, its almost exactly the length of the phone call. Yeah. She considered the advantages and disadvantages of reporting her mother, but ultimately feared she might not even be believed, as her mother would tell people she was mentally ill or lying. That they would forward charges to the federal government of wire fraud. RG: Right. So Im not sure how much could have been missing. And I think its true. After her mother left, Fierceton got out of bed, found a spare set of keys and drove herself to school. 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. When she was a teenager, she showed up bloodied and bruised at her elite private school. Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. How did you get to school? But it was definitely something I saw happening sort of this funneling of kids from the child welfare to criminal justice system. I think this is a conversation not necessarily for people who are still in question about what happened here. [2], At the beginning of April,[5] after she came to school with a black eye that showed through the concealer she put over it, she was taken to see the wellness director, who asked what had happened. We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. So they heard from her and immediately they call you into a meeting with the deputy provost at the time, Beth Winkelstein . And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. RG: That was Mackenzie Fierceton and thats our show. And the chain of events that happened leading into foster care? [3], Before that happened, Fierceton withdrew from the scholarship on her own. Is that your experience with it as well? RG: And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. That would have to be the rationale that they would have for those childhood journals to be faked. [2], "Family is not the people you are related to by blood," she wrote in the diary. Mackenzies critics even began nitpicking how much blood was in her hair while she was in the intensive care unit. Youre welcome to talk to Penn Police or their Division of Special Services or the Womens Center, or any program that Ive been involved in, or people that have been involved in supporting me who can corroborate this. 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. Fierceton is the 31st Penn student to be chosen as a Rhodes Scholar since the distinguished program's start in 1902. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. Thats not in question. Who will spend some significant amount of time in poverty. I really appreciate it. Two weeks into the school year, she realized she had been wrong. But while OSC allowed that it may not have been Fierceton's explicit intent to deceive, she had still done so, particularly when checking "yes" on the question on her SP2 application as to whether she was the first in her family to attend college (Fierceton stands by her reliance on Penn's definitions of FGLI on the Penn Plus website and the applicable federal laws; the university says that question is "composed of ordinary words with everyday meanings, and it makes no reference to any term or definition appearing in any other publication. [2], In March 2014, Fierceton began keeping a secret diary[a] documenting her life and her ruminations on her situation, writing it in her bedroom closet by the light of her phone and hiding it behind a ventilation panel. And its funny, cause it just made me so frustrated and I actually went back and read it. And theyll openly talk about this. It finds the definition the university's office uses, without that language, as being more determinative; Penn First, the FGLI student organization Fierceton had been involved with, also used that definition on its website for most of the time she was an undergraduate. And its mentioned briefly. [1], Shortly after Penn filed its response, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the story. And especially, again, like these stereotypes of black and brown, low-income families, the knee-jerk reaction is like: Oh, well, theyre unequipped to be a parent. ", 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. So they heard from her and immediately they call you into a meeting with the deputy provost at the time, Beth Winkelstein . [1]:86, Morrison prospered in her medical career, and she provided generously for her daughter, allowing her to ride horses, go on river rafting trips and attend exclusive private schools, such as Whitfield, in nearby Creve Coeur, where annual tuition was almost $30,000. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? And it felt very similar that, well, this cant be real. And youre getting instruction from a university official that that's how you're supposed to fill it out, that's what the definition says online. He died after a medical emergency in a basement of UPenn's Caster Building in 2018. Uh, my lawyer. Mackenzie Fierceton, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, has won the prestigious and extremely competitive Rhodes Scholarship, which will allow her to study at Oxford in November 2020. [23] In mid-April, Penn released Fierceton's master's degree. I think they do have a richer experience if they have more diversity around them, but that is more the point. MF: No, I found it before. She told them she felt that would be more likely to get an unbiased answer that way. Ultimately she decided to apply for the scholarship, in which she proposed to expand on the subject of her undergraduate thesis, the intertwining of the foster care and juvenile justice systems, to "continue to try to move forward in my life. [3], By the end of the interview Fierceton was crying. It, too, alleged that Fierceton was misrepresenting herself as having been poor and grown up entirely in foster care, with many photos of Fierceton as a little girl on the beach and riding horses, and other activities usually associated with affluence. So I was like: OK, fine. 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." Was there abuse before this? And many more vicious sentiments. But I got a bit of pressure from Penn to do that. Fellow students, their parents and Whitfield faculty also noticed signs which led them to suspect abuse. 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. 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