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. Mackenzie went to a private prep school, Whitfield, in St. Louis and was an active student. [2][e], A spokesman for the D.A. Theres people who span all different kinds of experiences. 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. MF: Absolutely. woman who won a coveted scholarship in the US to study at Oxford after claiming she was poor, overcame childhood abuse and grew up in foster care lost the opportunity after it emerged she was. Nor is she obligated to meet their expectations of her. [3] In high school there, Fierceton was a model student. Fierceton. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. [5] She posted it before Fierceton's release from the hospital, and once free began calling Fierceton's friends and former teachers, telling them that Fierceton was having issues and had made it appear Morrison had beaten her. The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. There were definitely, Im sure. Not as something that is for the benefit of the MacKenzies, the people who were being brought into the school, but actually for the benefit of the university itself, its image and also for the students. verbally. And I think said something along the lines of there were things missing and it was distorted. And I told them I only have a half-hour, because Im working, Im in class, and were going to go through all of 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. That is when I would trace it back to. 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. [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. So I kind of simplified that in a sentence to make my point of what I wanted to study, which was the foster-care-to-prison pipeline, which is also what I ultimately ended up doing my Ph.D. on and what I just started this year. There was also the part of me that was terrified. And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? 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. [2], In December 2021 Fierceton retained another lawyer pro bono and filed her own suit against Penn, alleging that the university's investigations into her history and how she had represented herself was a "sham", undertaken with the intent of forcing her to withdraw from the Rhodes Scholarship and damaging her credibility as a witness in the Driver suit, constituting tortious interference with a business relationship and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. January 7, 2022. Gathering outside Caster, whose renovation they also demanded, they marched toward College Hall, where Winkelstein had taken over as interim provost following Gutmann's departure, and chanted for her ouster as well. RG: Right. "[I]t was probably from someone in my biological family," she told The Intercept, "because it had photos of me; it had very specific information that very few people would haveand I don't think many people would have random childhood photos of me. But Mackenzie Fierceton is not a liar. Or was the real issue that Fierceton did not really fit the profile of a suffering student who needed the benevolence of an Ivy League school?" This was about a week after. There was also the part of me that was terrified. The program's application asked "Are you the first generation in your family to attend college? This can happen to someone in my community. 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. At first she went to a friend's home in Ohio and then returned to the Philadelphia area as May and graduation approached to live with a classmate's family. She was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome and released after three weeks. Penn has released its hold on a master of social work degree from Mackenzie Fierceton the former Rhodes Scholarship recipient who filed a lawsuit against the University following its investigation into allegations that she falsified her status as a first-generation, low-income student and survivor of abuse. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. And I turned over all this information to his widow. And we have this idea of what a person looks like who commits a crime or who gets arrested for child abuse. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. RG: in America. [2] Winkelstein, who has a Ph.D. in bioengineering and has studied injuries,[3] then proceeded to interrogate Fierceton at length about her abuse and hospitalization, in a manner that led Fierceton to believe that not only did Winkelstein doubt her story but had spoken with Morrison. 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. Its, in my opinion, because they get overlooked and the kids like me are kind of rendered invisible by the privileges of our biological families. And back in high school, it was a similar thing. "We have concluded that there is a basis for serious concern and that further investigation by the Rhodes Committee may be appropriate", she wrote. [Laughs.]. [2], To White, Morrison repeated her story that her daughter had fabricated the abuse allegations. But I agreed to come into this Zoom meeting and this was the last day of November 2020. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. I think they have said, well, theres different definitions and the dean who is the dean of the grad school said: Well, thats not our definition. And I didnt get an answer. She was an independent student when she applied. 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. Its a very under-researched field. 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. So first-generation and/or low-income, again, is the acronym. RG: Interesting. "Without her trauma, she didnt matter", wrote a commentator in the Tulane Hullabaloo. I was a teenager and I was in the hospital and I didnt have any perspective. 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. . So, yes, an article came out in the local paper saying that she had been arrested. That was my personal statement. There were so many there are, I guess I should say so many moving pieces. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? Our grad school had no specific definitions or instructions, but I did have a relationship with the associate director of admissions at the time. 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? Mackenzie Fierceton didn't come until much later, but with good reason. Fierceton told the story that, according to her diary, her mother had told her to tellthat she had tripped while playing with the family dogs and bruised herself on the corner of a nearby table. And so they had to see some benefit to them in doing this. [2] Fierceton and her mentor reconstructed the conversation and transcribed it; the university has claimed it is inaccurate but the mentor stands by it. Yeah, it was, things like that where I simplified all of these foster kids that youre living with a biological family who have kids, which I would say are foster siblings. And so they had to see some benefit to them in doing this. Our producer is Zach Young. And how much confidence do you have that that anonymous complainer was Carrie, your biological mother. MF: Yes, definitely. Both reports refrained from expressing an opinion about the truth of her abuse allegations. Thank you so much for having me. What happened after you went out of the hospital? And after you talked to the school, how did you get to school the next morning? When she was a teenager, she showed up bloodied and bruised at her elite private school. Mackenzie Fierceton is the child of a doctor who attended a private prep school in a wealthy suburb. The reality star has struggled with drug addiction for years. That they would forward charges to the federal government of wire fraud. Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. 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. ", When Penn's Office of Student Conduct confronted Fierceton with the discrepancy between her statement on two of her applications that she ", The exact definition of FGLI relevant to forms Fierceton filled out is a key point in the Rhodes Trust and Penn investigations of her. She didnt know he was in the basement. 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. And I dont remember all of the questions, but it was a really intense, rapid fire of really difficult and challenging questions. In between those placements, she slept at friends' houses for long periods. 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. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. And you experienced that yourself, right? University of Pennsylvania student Mackenzie Fierceton had her Rhodes Scholarship revoked and her master's degree withheld after allegations surfaced that she was lying about her. 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. As an anonymous letter writer revealed, however, she was also the privately educated child of a radiologist, brought up in an affluent suburb. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. MF: At first there was actually, there was contention. She had not, she insisted, written her original essay with the intent of increasing her chances of admission. And so was it later, in a different conversation where they asked about the line in the essay about not being able to recognize yourself or is there some illusion to that in the transcript that you found? She and a separate witness said records of child-welfare agencies from years earlier are not easy to obtain. And still, it was just like: Nope. The article by reporter Rachel Aviv was called How an Ivy League School Turned Against a Student, and it tells the story of an extraordinary battle between Mackenzie and the University of Pennsylvania. 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. A Rhodes Scholar who claimed that she had grown up in the foster system has lost her scholarship after an investigation revealed that she grew up in a middle-class family and attended a $30,000-per-annum private school. 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. 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]. Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. Like questioning: How much blood? So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. Its a very under-researched field. But I just had a bad feeling and I started to try to find more information. 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 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. 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." As in her case, first responders had experienced similar delays in finding and reaching the building, and difficulties removing Driver once they did due to the same accessibility issues. I think they do have a richer experience if they have more diversity around them, but that is more the point. And we entered the meeting and it immediately felt really hostile to me. [Laughs.]. 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. She was hospitalized twice in 2014 due to injuries she says were inflicted by her mother; after the second stay, which lasted three weeks, the state removed her from the house and placed her in foster care. When asked what she might have done differently, Fierceton told the Chronicle that while she had at some points wished she had never applied to Penn, and later considered rephrasing some of the things she wrote on her essays and applications, "[w]here I've landed is that I have a right to write about my experiences as I experienced them. The situation was further complicated by a lack of cell phone service in the basement, requiring students to team up and verbally relay information from the 9-1-1 operator to a professor performing CPR on Driver and back to a student posted just outside the door. [Laughs.]. So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. 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. And did they say anything along those lines? Fierceton wrote to SP2 dean Sara Bachman complaining about the interview, saying she felt "worthlessness, hopelessness, and shame" for a week afterwards. She was . We need to stay on task. 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 then the focus shifted to the second box. And youre getting instruction from a university official that thats how youre supposed to fill it out, thats what the definition says online. 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. [22], In the New Yorker article, Fierceton and others criticized Penn for its use of not only her story but another recent FGLI Rhodes awardee as poverty porn, suggesting the university had turned on her when it learned she had actually come from a privileged, affluent background and thus did not fit the narrative of having grown up in foster care recounted in its news release and the accompanying Inquirer article. 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. [2], The fine was later withdrawn after it was found to conflict with a provision of the university's charter prohibiting the imposition of fines in cases involving academic integrity. [2], Morrison's arrest had been reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,[6] where commenters on the online version of the story took her side, speculating that Fierceton was "an entitled brat" who had vengefully fabricated charges that had the potential to end her mother's medical career. Is that your experience with it as well? The university, in its response to Mackenzies lawsuit, referred to Mackenzies mother as an accomplished physician and claimed that a court had found her allegations not to be credible. Margulis later told The New Yorker that he had been telling the prosecutor repeatedly that Fierceton "had no credibility and made all of this up", the same theme as Morrison's many arguments in person and over the phone to other Whitfield parents. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? 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], Fierceton moved into the first of several foster homes, with one other foster sibling and two biological children of the foster parents. 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. She chose Fierceton from a list of names she had come up with herself that projected strength, and a petition to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia was accepted. So not that I think at all the population of kids who are in foster care is representative of what abuse or neglect and what households they occur or dont occur in. 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