When I came to Penn and saw all of these students who were living that life, there was a sense of community and solidarity amongst us, which was very powerful for me because I just felt so out of place. Some people were very much on my side; some people were very much, I think, in that sort of cognitive dissonance of: This cant be true because if it can, then Im in danger. And if you read it aloud, its almost exactly the length of the phone call. And where are you at school? Seeing other students consult their parents for minor decisions made her feel left out; she avoided telling people she had been in foster care before college. And if you havent already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. RG: Instead, I want to talk more about what this says about the system, that something so seemingly irrational could be produced by this system, and actually could be predicted to be produced by this system in some ways. 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. She was an independent student when she applied. First, Morrison had tried to send Fierceton some jewelry during her freshman year and contacted the university to find out how to get in touch with her; when Fierceton was informed of this she said she had a, "Regardless of the actual reason for her name change," Penn's lawyers write in their response to her lawsuit, "Fierceton effectively fastened a buffer of separation between her real life story and the false story she had cultivated for Penn and others. Like I just havent, really, there to be a lot of information about me publicly. How do I do that in a succinct way when theres a very short word count and youre trying to fit everyones experience in?And so I didnt really think about: Oh, I need to say: This foster sibling who was in the foster care system. Raised in Chesterfield, Missouri, a West County suburb of St. Louis, she attended and graduated from the Whitfield School in Creve Coeur. Now anyone who earns that distinction is to be commended, but the article also noted that Mackenzie had aged out of foster care . And that is, I felt very defeated too. Fierceton wished that she had been more willing to correct mistaken impressions that she might have made and at the time "just kind of crumbled behind the pressure. Since we began the Reshuffled journey, any mention of foster care grabs my attention, the same with Tracy. So they heard from her and immediately they call you into a meeting with the deputy provost at the time, Beth Winkelstein . The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. 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. What kind of a group is that? Her junior year at Whitfield, a prestigious prep school, Mackenzie showed up to school one day in a terrible state. Ryan Grim: This weeks guest on Deconstructed is Mackenzie Fierceton, who was the subject of a recent story in The New Yorker. So they didnt ask about that in this meeting. The award brings the number of Penn Rhodes Scholars to 31 since the scholarship's inception in 1902. After Fierceton was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship during her senior year, questions about whether she had accurately represented her background led to investigations by both the Rhodes Trust and Penn that concluded she had at times suggested or failed to correct the impression left by some statements about her, and her own application essays, that she had grown up a poor foster child. And if you havent already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. So Rachel had it and Penn disputed it. And after you talked to the school, how did you get to school the next morning? And because poverty and abuse are so pervasive in society and particularly in a country that has such a minimal social safety net and has so much violence. Right. In other words, if you are parent who says that you are wishing your daughter well and youre telling the authorities that shes just mentally ill and its just a really, really sad and tragic case that shes making up all of these allegations of abuse and throwing herself down stairs, and beating herself up all for cries for help, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera you wouldnt then also pursue a multi-year long effort to destroy her life. That was my personal statement. You have a good education and youre clearly smart. To me, it seems like any reader of the English language would read that in a literary sense , of its self-exploration, self-doubt, trauma. And I think its striking to read that back and just see how clearly distressed and distraught I was in continuing to push on that series of questions about a really traumatic experience. He died after a medical emergency in a basement of UPenn's Caster Building in 2018. Which as Im sure youve learned since is a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of poverty . MF: You know, I honestly dont know. Fierceton's life story, as well as her self-identification as a "first generation" college student, came under scrutiny by the university when an anonymous email alleged that Fierceton was not. She was . According to Fierceton, her mother pushed her down the stairs and then beat her extensively at the bottom. Am I right about that? Her account was not completely inaccurateshe described as a foster child one sibling of hers who was actually the biological child of her foster parents, for instance, which she attributed later to not having developed her essay at length. RG: And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . 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. [2] The psychologist testified that she had seen both mother and daughter during 2007 and 2008. You didnt grow up in crumbling projects your entire life. Period." Just a quick circling back, Im actually not sure if it was her who first reached out or if it was General Counsel Wendy White, because I later found out that they had a phone call about 36 hours after the article came out and seemed to talk pretty extensively, and then there were a lot of emails that happened. 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.. Mackenzie Fierceton, a 2016 graduate of Whitfield School in Creve Coeur, lost the scholarship after allegations surfaced that she had provided "false narratives" to education officials, the New. But part of it is funding decisions. She did not remember what had caused it. 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. 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. So, yes, an article came out in the local paper saying that she had been arrested. Uh, my lawyer. "[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 I was the one who uncovered my classmates death. 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 it became pretty clear to me that there had been a very similar delay in his care, but even worse dynamics. She ruined her moms career. MF: But yeah, that, I guess, just one point of clarification that I recently, in the last few months, just found out about. Her mentor told Licht afterwards that "it felt like an attack on a student" and that she had never experienced anything like it. At first there was actually, there was contention. And did they say anything along those lines? 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. RG: Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. She lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital, where she spent three days in intensive care. 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. RG: And did they say anything along those lines? RG: And so where is your story now? 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 and scholarship applications.NY Post photo composite She told them she felt that would be more likely to get an unbiased answer that way. At school, she began confiding about her situation with a history teacher, telling them about her mother's physical abuse. A picture of her was posted at the nurse's station should she make the attempt. RG: So one of the questions that you mentioned that they asked was about your essay , RG: which, correct me if Im wrong, but I think it begins saying something along the lines of: Youre in the hospital, you looked in the mirror, and you couldnt recognize yourself, you couldnt recognize your features. 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. [2], Fierceton remained in the hospital, where DSS ordered her placed in protective custody. That they would forward charges to the federal government of wire fraud. And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. Thats not in question. MF: Just a quick circling back, Im actually not sure if it was her who first reached out or if it was General Counsel Wendy White, because I later found out that they had a phone call about 36 hours after the article came out and seemed to talk pretty extensively, and then there were a lot of emails that happened. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at [emailprotected] Thanks so much! It was literally just like: She was arrested and her daughter is hospitalized. 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? The court granted Morrison a protection order against her former husband; Fierceton had no relationship with him from that time onward. Who are your biological family? There were definitely, Im sure. And I dont remember all of the questions, but it was a really intense, rapid fire of really difficult and challenging questions. We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. And we entered the meeting and it immediately felt really hostile to me. And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? And then very quickly turn to very specific questions about different instances of abuse. So thats the background of him. Morrison was arrested and charged with felony child abuse and third-degree assault (a misdemeanor) in the incident that had led to Fierceton's hospitalization, and an additional felony child abuse count for the incident that had triggered the DSS caseworker's visit earlier in the year; the arrest warrant alleged that Morrison had deliberately slammed her daughter's head into the table. In a 25-minute conversation, she went into detail with Fierceton about her past and what she planned to do with her scholarship. The program's application asked "Are you the first generation in your family to attend college? 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. [2] Her father, Billy Terrell,[1] had been an actor in soap operas. And that was the end of it, right? [1]:64, In February 2015, before presenting the evidence against Morrison to a grand jury for an indictment, the St. Louis County district attorney's office dropped all the charges against Morrison over Brandt's objections. Both reports refrained from expressing an opinion about the truth of her abuse allegations. Betsy Reed is The Intercepts editor in chief. And it just felt pretty devastating to me, because for so long I hid everything, Id been so ashamed, and I already felt so much guilt in coming forward then. Professor Walter Licht, a Penn historian who runs the program, recalls her as the sort of student who would "[ask] a question that makes everyone stop and brings the conversation to a different pitch." Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? 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. So one of the questions that you mentioned that they asked was about your essay , which, correct me if Im wrong, but I think it begins saying something along the lines of: Youre in the hospital, you looked in the mirror, and you couldnt recognize yourself, you couldnt recognize your features. The mother of a friend of Fierceton's recalls that when she told Morrison on the phone that she "was not interested" in hearing what Morrison had to say, she got angry and confrontational. At first she explained Fierceton's injuries as either having been caused by an intruder or somehow self-inflicted, then said her daughter had fallen downstairs while she was trying to help her get some chewing gum out of her hair. Teachers at Whitfield who had been supportive while she was there dropped out of touch. 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? who was, I believe now, the acting provost. [2] When she turned 18, she formally left foster care[d] but continued living with the family whose home she was in. And still, it was just like: Nope. [2][g], The packages she says she received were supplemented by hangup calls, which a faculty member Fierceton occasionally lived with recalled her receiving in the months preceding the trial of her mother's lawsuit against DSS later in her junior year. or in graduate school. "I really don't have words,'" she told a mentor at the Penn Women's Center. But I got a bit of pressure from Penn to do that. Fierceton's mother's supporters have maintained that her daughter was an emotionally manipulative girl who injured herself and fabricated other aspects of the abuse in order to become a more appealing candidate for admission to an Ivy League college such as the University of Pennsylvania. She wasn't poor and grew up in a wealthy household with a successful mother. 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. [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. After a teacher reported what they felt was abuse, a social worker came by and your mother was able to just charm the pants off her. How old were you when you were applying to college? Our producer is Zach Young. Or whatever our kind of contemporary version of it is. The 35-year-old has been hit with two warrants for his arrest. And so, just the immediate reaction was like: Theres no way. She didnt know he was in the basement. And I didnt really know any information, except for that he had had a medical emergency in class and then been pronounced dead at the hospital. Right. RG: Like questioning: How much blood? And she had gone to a private school growing up. 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. But it was definitely something I saw happening sort of this funneling of kids from the child welfare to criminal justice system. They would not do so, however, if she agreed to withdraw from the scholarship, surrender the Latin honors that had accompanied her degree, and take a mandatory leave for "counseling and support" before receiving her master's. Rather than it being for the purpose of benefiting the students themselves. [2], Later that year, after that first foster home turned out to be "chaotic", with Fierceton's foster sibling attempting suicide, she moved to another one. Whereas white parents, a lot of times, it is much harder the bar is much higher to remove them from their homes because their whiteness or possibly class privilege or whatever identities that they have that might not fit a social worker or judges or whoevers involved perception of whose kids should be in the foster system. [2][3], Fierceton had initially expected it would be easier for her to transition to college life than it was for other students, since she was not leaving a family behind at home. MF: And that is, I felt very defeated too. And you experienced that yourself, right? 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. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. MF: You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. Anything in particular jump out at you after having read back over that transcript? So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? As a result she withdrew from the Rhodes Scholarship; a sympathetic Penn faculty member has paid her Oxford tuition in its stead.[2]. Why were you in the hospital that long? Penn again spoke with Morrison and, this time as well, the St. Louis County prosecutor who had decided to drop the charges, without informing Fierceton, which the university defended as standard practice not to identify witnesses interviewed. I tried to help as much as I could. One trigger for the beatings was sexual abuse by one of her mother's boyfriends, Henry Lovelace, Jr., a fitness trainer and multiple winner of the Missouri's Strongest Man competition in his weight class, which her mother warned her never to talk about. Her mother had no explanation for the injuries, other than saying perhaps she had done it to herself. And it started with, this paragraph-and-a-half of waking up in the hospital and then, like you said, looking at my face, not recognizing myself, and kind of describing what I felt like and what the room looked like. In 2019, Fierceton testified in a court hearing that, in September 2014, her mother allegedly pushed her down a set of stairs and hit her in the face several times. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. And I asked in the email exchange: Is this about the anonymous email? I wasnt there for all of this, but after I went through all these interviews, that was my conclusion. Morrison told White in an email. 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. And again, people, including Penn administrators, have the perception of I think the stereotype and my friend Anea Moore, whos a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Penn who founded Penn first or co-founded it had a really great quote in The New Yorker about we arent all, quote-unquote something along the lines of like impoverished, inner city kids who go to crumbling public schools as the wider media portrays us to be. A 24-year-old Rhodes Scholar has left the prestigious program after being accused of lying about growing up poor, reports say. And did you find this after The New Yorker article was published? And: Did you report what was going on to your school? And we had a fairly lengthy conversation, just kind of going through the ins and outs of my childhood and left it at, she was like: OK, I understand now and Im just going to leave this. 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 . I have all these three kinds of different rationale and corroborations. Like, I dont have the precise statistics in front of me, but if you asked people to guess at the number of people who will experience, say, two years of poverty in their life, people will miss it by magnitudes. RG: And how much did she challenge your medical condition after that beating? And my biological family did not fit those stereotypes, and I think that was really hard for people to process. 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. Fierceton had apparently made much of her status as a 'first generation, low income' student, an abuse survivor who aged out of foster care. The teen said she was sent to. [2][4], After she had recovered from her seizure incident earlier that year, fellow students told her how difficult it had been for first responders to get to the basement of Caster Hall, where SP2 is based and holds most of its classes, and how difficult it had been to get her out. But when youre filling out a box where its yes or no and theres no more information or kind of! box [laughs], its like you have to fit yourself in, saying: Are you the first in your family to attend? 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