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. And then it just launched into the first half being a line-by-line it felt like interrogation of my applications. At school, she began confiding about her situation with a history teacher, telling them about her mother's physical abuse. Penn student and Rhodes Scholarship recipient Mackenzie Fierceton filed a lawsuit against the University following its investigation into allegations that questioned her status as a first-generation, low-income student and survivor of abuse.. She had lived with her mother since her parents divorced acrimoniously during her childhood, and a guardian ad litem was appointed to represent Fierceton's interests in the proceeding, during which abuse allegations were made. 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?" How did you get to school? 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. Detective Carrie Brandt, who had been planning to follow up on the hotline report at Whitfield that day, instead interviewed Fierceton at the hospital. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. [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. 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. How long were you in the hospital? Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. Penn's report notes that Fierceton disputes this account. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. And we have our own specific grad school definitions. "[b] She considered running away but had a distant relationship with her father, and nowhere else she believed she could go. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse.. Thats been my understanding of it. Fierceton said that when she had applied to SP2 as a sophomore she had cleared it with the school's associate director of admissions, who told her that a student's biological parents were not relevant to that definition, and said the same thing in 2020 (Penn's OSC interviewed the associate director and SP2's associate director for financial aid whom Fierceton said she had a similar conversation with; neither remembered speaking with Fierceton about the issue)[1]:111112). 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. [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. And you saw that playing out right away, right, when your biological mother was first arrested? Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of lying. And I think that she kind of encompassed a lot of the stereotypes that people, and also the Penn administrators have about what FGLI students are when in reality, those of us who are part of the community know that theres so many shapes and sizes of FGLI students. I took photos of the building and sent it to them, and I was connecting them with different people who were in my class, who were in his class. [2], For her senior year, Whitfield gave Fierceton a full scholarship. Because processes become Kafkaesque very quickly. RG: 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. Fierceton had also brought her mentor, a staff member at the university's Civic House, into the meeting; at the outset Winkelstein told the woman she could not speak or she would be disconnected immediately. The reporter had assumed based on her status as a FGLI student which stands for first-generation, low-income that she had been poor her entire life. [Laughs.]. RG: And whats the difference between the U.S. and English system? The 23-year-old planned to use. 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. Right. And then to be so unanimously disbelieved and, at that point, this article was like a paragraph and a half. 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: 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. 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. And thats an unfortunate reality so many survivors experience, not having a lot of documentation. [2], A week later, Fierceton received an email asking her to attend a meeting over Zoom with Winkelstein. Enough blood? RG: Yeah. And so youre becoming rather inconvenient to the university at that point , I would assume, which plays into the way that universities and elite structures think of diversity, I think. 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. 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? 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. Right. 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. She lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital, where she spent three days in intensive care. RG: That was Mackenzie Fierceton and thats our show. 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. Yeah. And if you read it aloud, its almost exactly the length of the phone call. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. So, yes. 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. It's a hard scholarship to win, but Fierceton. 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". Two weeks into the school year, she realized she had been wrong. Mackenzie Fierceton didn't come until much later, but with good reason. [3], By the end of the interview Fierceton was crying. Teachers and parents at Whitfield had donated new clothing and school supplies for her. And I think said something along the lines of there were things missing and it was distorted. Within a year of her arrest, another St. Louis-area hospital had granted her admitting privileges, and she was able to resume her medical career. Right. So first-generation and/or low-income, again, is the acronym. Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb. And we do know for sure that she was in touch with the university. I think they do have a richer experience if they have more diversity around them, but that is more the point. But it was in the sense of: I didnt recognize myself both because I was beaten and my face was swollen and whatever, and I felt like at rock bottom and broken. Although she had not attended an orientation session for first-generation/low-income (FGLI) students she had been invited to, on campus she began attending meetings and gatherings of Penn First, an FGLI student group founded the preceding year to pressure Penn to better accommodate their needs, such as not closing dormitories and cafeterias over breaks since many FGLI students could not, for various reasons, return home during those periods. Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. But part of it is funding decisions. I have some of my own theories, but I want to hear yours. 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. [1]:95, Judge Kristine Allen Kerr ultimately held for Morrison. [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. MF: Yeah. I tried to help as much as I could. 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. And its mentioned briefly. In its response to Fierceton's lawsuit, the university says its general counsel talked with Hayes, who said that bringing the charges had been the "biggest mistake" of his career. And whats the difference between the U.S. and English system? When she was a teenager, she showed up bloodied and bruised at her elite private school. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? [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. There were so many there are, I guess I should say so many moving pieces. And then the other question was: Are you the first in your family to attend college? 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. I wasnt there for all of this, but after I went through all these interviews, that was my conclusion. The program's application asked "Are you the first generation in your family to attend college? She retained two lawyers to represent her pro bono; they talked to Morrison themselves, who told them she still loved her daughter and wanted her to come home. If you speak, Im going to disconnect you from the call. You know, I honestly dont know. She wasn't poor and grew up in a wealthy household with a successful mother. Interesting. And so I did definitely have that kind of like: I have no idea what else is going to convince these people. 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. 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. 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. 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. Fierceton believes it was likely sent by Morrison or one of her close relatives. Given the pandemic, Rhodes Scholar judges interviewed candidates over Zoom. Morrison's name was therefore ordered removed from the DSS registry. But now looking back and rereading that article in the last year and seeing that it virtually had no information. 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. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. There were definitely, Im sure. Period." 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. "They are the people that support you, look out for you, & love you unconditionally. The prosecutor eventually dropped the charges and the arrest record was expunged. Were close to done. Mackenzie, for her part, was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania and, in her sophomore year, won a Rhodes Scholarship. She recalled showing up at the foster home with her new clothes in a plastic bag, feeling "like a passenger in my own body", she recalled later. Like I just havent, really, there to be a lot of information about me publicly. 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. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. Like you said, theres also the cultural stereotype of like Orphan Annie and Oliver Twist of what these kinds of kids are supposed to look like that starts so early on in, and deep in the culture or media that we encounter that I think really ingrains that into people. [2], Fierceton was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania (commonly known as Penn) on a full scholarship, arranged through QuestBridge. So it makes some sense that they were very similar questions. "It is seven years later, and I am still having to prove and prove and prove what has happened to me." She arrives as a new student at Erinsborough High School and is connected to the . Theres people who span all different kinds of experiences. [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. RG: Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. 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. Both reports refrained from expressing an opinion about the truth of her abuse allegations. Now anyone who earns that distinction is to be commended, but the article also noted that Mackenzie had aged out of foster care . 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. And please go and leave us a rating or a review it helps people find the show. MF: No, I found it before. So they didnt ask about that in this meeting. And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . [1]:111112, Penn's investigators asked Fierceton why she had pretended to be asking on another's behalf when she made her queries within the university. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. [3], Before that happened, Fierceton withdrew from the scholarship on her own. Since we began the Reshuffled journey, any mention of foster care grabs my attention, the same with Tracy. 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. Fierceton, according to Penn's response, had learned during her parents' divorce how to make calls to the child-abuse hotline and that teachers were mandatory reporters. 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. RG: And did they say anything along those lines? A trial was held in early 2019 at which she, Fierceton, a psychologist and a DSS investigator testified. 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