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. Since we began the Reshuffled journey, any mention of foster care grabs my attention, the same with Tracy. "Was the problem that a child who was placed into foster care and had no contact with her biological mother wasn't actually a first-generation college student? I was a teenager and I was in the hospital and I didnt have any perspective. Detective Carrie Brandt, who had been planning to follow up on the hotline report at Whitfield that day, instead interviewed Fierceton at the hospital. Fierceton clarified the details in question and Ruderman said she understood better. "[20][m] A syndicated morning radio show named Fierceton its "donkey of the day". What foster family were you with in X,Y, Z year? And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. The dean of SP2 told Penn otherwise, but Fierceton noted that the school had never shared what its definition was. Because processes become Kafkaesque very quickly. Brandt, the Chesterfield police detective who had originally investigated the case, said later that the prosecutor never explained to her what that new evidence was. Those investigations revealed that for the first 17 years of her life, Fierceton was raised by her mother, Dr. Carrie Morrison, an accomplished physician. Yeah, so Penn First for the whole FGLI community. RG: Did they make that threat in writing or was that . And where are you at school? 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. RG: in America. You had mentioned that you actually made a transcript of your interview with Deputy Provost Finkelstein shortly after the conversation. On Saturday afternoon, Fierceton said she found herself in a Zoom meeting for several hours with 10 other finalists from this region. Michael Hayes, who had prosecuted Morrison, told the Chronicle that "The more I learned, the less certain I became about what really happened. 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. RG: Who will spend some significant amount of time in poverty. And so where is your story now? The university writes: After those who knew Fierceton raised questions about her story, it was investigated not just once, but several times, and not just by Penn faculty and staff, but also the Rhodes Trust. 24-year-old Mackenzie Fierceton won the Rhodes scholarship in November 2020, but a tip-off to the prestigious committee kicked off a deeper investigation into the student's background. In the lawsuit filed on Dec. 21, Fierceton, a 2021 School of Social Policy . A cousin who lived with the Morrisons for a while did not see any signs of abuse and believed it was possible Fierceton could have inflicted the injuries herself. Thats been my understanding of it. And it became pretty clear to me that they had spoken to Carrie and or seen medical records. She was one of only 32 high school students selected from a pool of 2300 applicants. And its funny, cause it just made me so frustrated and I actually went back and read it. At her request Penn kept her contact information out of the school's directory on its website. But the acclaim quickly devolved into acrimony as the university and the Rhodes Trust began questioning aspects of Fiercetons backstory. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? [3], Through her attorney, Morrison gave a statement, her only one so far, on the case: "Mackenzie is deeply loved by her mom and family. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. Yeah. Given the pandemic, Rhodes Scholar judges interviewed candidates over Zoom. He died of his heart attack within 12 minutes of arrival at the hospital. So I was like: OK, fine. January 7, 2022. "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." Her mother was arrested and charged with abuse, and Mackenzie went into foster care. That is when I would trace it back to. 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. [7] The charges against Lovelace were dropped later for lack of evidence. So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. 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. Fierceton was living off-campus by then, but she and her roommates decided to leave their apartment. I think they do have a richer experience if they have more diversity around them, but that is more the point. Am I right about that? [c] Chewing was difficult as well, and she had a feeding tube inserted. [2], Fierceton moved into the first of several foster homes, with one other foster sibling and two biological children of the foster parents. 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? [2], At the end of 2013, in the middle of her sophomore year, Fierceton was admitted to St. Luke's, where her mother worked, with a head injury. As an anonymous letter writer revealed, however, she was also the privately educated child of a radiologist, brought up in an affluent suburb. RG: Right. I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. RG: Right. I think youre right. 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. And eventually they filed a big wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020. 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. Because thats not how we understand poverty. Fierceton believes it was likely sent by Morrison or one of her close relatives. "[2], On her application, Fierceton recounted her background and the unexpected way it led to her becoming a foster child. She also called herself a first-generation low-income student. [2], Two months later the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. [2], Morrison, no longer employed by St. Luke's, then began the process of trying to restore her reputation by having all references to it removed from the public record. So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. And then to be so unanimously disbelieved and, at that point, this article was like a paragraph and a half. She and a separate witness said records of child-welfare agencies from years earlier are not easy to obtain. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse.. 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. 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. 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. 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. And whats the difference between the U.S. and English system? MF: Yeah, so Penn First for the whole FGLI community. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. 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. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? And the staff member saying like: I understand, can you please give Mackenzie an estimate of how many questions are left? 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. 2020 College graduate Mackenzie Fierceton (Photo from Mackenzie Fierceton). They have since claimed that that is not what they [laughs] insinuated, I believe my former lawyer spoke to it in The New Yorker piece. Who will spend some significant amount of time in poverty. 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?" 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. RG: And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? While the investigators understood, they also wrote that the limited information she provided may have been more likely to elicit an answer favorable to her. Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. In early 2022, after stories about her struggle with Penn and the Rhodes Trust received national attention from stories in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New Yorker, commentators took the university, and American elite higher education in general, to task for its use of the story of Fierceton and some other recent Rhodes recipients as poverty porn and its shifting definition of an FGLI student. Her mothers name was entered into a registry of abusers. And then again there was trouble getting him out of the basement. OSC referred the recommendation to an SP2 panel to make a final determination; she has subsequently appealed the decision. [2], Fierceton supplied the trust's investigators with her medical and court records from the mid-2010s as well as letters from 26 peopleteachers at Whitfield, the three Penn faculty members who had written her Rhodes recommendation letters, vouching for her abuse claims and saying she had never misrepresented herself. 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. 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. Why were you in the hospital that long? Its a very under-researched field. [10], Fierceton, who outside of school had also taken on a volunteer position as a birthing doula, decided during that summer to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship to get a Ph.D. at Oxford University in England, encouraged by a classmate who had just won one himself and was impressed by her activism. RG: And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . 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. Picture: University of Pennsylvania/Instagram. I think for a lot of us, we have to sort of other poverty and abuse and put it in a box, partly, to protect ourselves. Yeah. [2], One day in September 2014, she told the history teacher about Lovelace's abuse. And do you know Linda Tirado? 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. Our focus is not on the debate it reviews over Mackenzie Fierceton's accounts of her life, though we affirm her integrity. But that was definitely a driving force for why I decided, ultimately, to withdraw because I felt like: OK, federal prison is no joke. Or do you think that the wheels were already in motion before that? [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. Fierceton began secretly documenting physical and psychological abuse by her mother, a radiologist, during her high school years. Or is that it separates two into one? And I think said something along the lines of there were things missing and it was distorted. Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadnt done it? And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? [19] The New York Post wrote that "[t]he case exposes the murky underbelly of elite schools like Penn. Now anyone who earns that distinction is to be commended, but the article also noted that Mackenzie had aged out of foster care . That was my personal statement. 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. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. This definition resembles the one used in the federal Higher Education Act, which says that first-generation status depends on the education level of a parent whom a student regularly resided with and received support from.. So those questions really came later. 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? And then very quickly turn to very specific questions about different instances of abuse. Because Im not under any illusion that Im the typical foster kid. Like there is more attention to systemic poverty and trying to keep children in their homes to begin with, I would say, which is important, because if you can keep kids in their homes, then theyre not in the system and facing that foster-to-prison pipeline. Her admission to Oxford was unaffected, and she began her graduate studies in sociology there later in the year, with a Penn professor covering her tuition. 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