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. And I was the one who uncovered my classmates death. I think there were almost 30 of those letters again, very similar to who had given statements in the past to corroborate my abuse as well as leaders in the FGLI community saying yes, we started this community. The fact that they even challenged that really does expose a lot of whats going on here because I assume in their mind, theyre saying: Well, she went to this private school; she had a nice house; her mom probably drove a nice car maybe you even drove a decent car! At Oxford University, Mackenzie Fierceton will conduct research on the "foster care-to-prison" pipeline. MF: I think youre right. "[2], Fierceton answered yes. And the chain of events that happened leading into foster care? "She was a foster child, but not for long enough. RG: or in graduate school. I think [its] called Penn First, I believe, and it seems like you socially spent a lot of time with them? But she says she occasionally received packages at her dorm room containing objects she suspected had come from her mother, such as a bracelet with an inscription about finding the truth, or others close to her, such as a pair of sneakers, which she believed Lovelace, who had sometimes helped her stretch before workouts, had sent. The nurse also reported bruises all over Fierceton's body, in different stages of healing, considered an indicator of possible physical abuse. Thank you so much for having me. Or is that it separates two into one? And to me, I'm like I am a household of one, so I am the only person in my family. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. 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. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? And youre getting instruction from a university official that thats how youre supposed to fill it out, thats what the definition says online. And many more vicious sentiments. But teachers noticed that Fierceton often seemed physically uncomfortable in her mother's presence, and a close friend noted that she was often injured. The award brings the number of Penn Rhodes Scholars to 31 since the scholarship's inception in 1902. That was Mackenzie Fierceton and thats our show. Yeah, I mean, so that specific definition wasnt public until 2018. 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. I reached out for a response to the University of Pennsylvania and also Provost Beth Winkelstein and General Counsel Wendy White for a response, as well as to Mackenzies biological mother. Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. RG: Is that what sent you into a surreal state? To me, it seems like any reader of the English language would read that in a literary sense , RG: of its self-exploration, self-doubt, trauma. That is when I would trace it back to. We dont believe you. And so I did definitely have that kind of like: I have no idea what else is going to convince these people. Like I just havent, really, there to be a lot of information about me publicly. You didnt grow up in crumbling projects your entire life. What about Rhodes? Did they make that threat in writing or was that . They took photographs of Caster's staircases and elevators, and interviewed witnesses and some of the Penn paramedics who had responded. So those questions came like later on and were really a part of the initial interrogation. You know, I honestly dont know. . Mackenzie Fierceton, C'20, has been awarded a 2021 Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at the University of Oxford. And so, just the immediate reaction was like: Theres no way. Mackenzies critics even began nitpicking how much blood was in her hair while she was in the intensive care unit. They demanded that the university remove the notation from her file. 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. "I think that we could contribute to the community, the broader Philadelphia community, and the West Philadelphia community more positively, instead of doing things that are not only undermining them but are actively policing them, and end up creating and perpetuating more violence," she told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university's student newspaper. He explained that Morrison had had no prior criminal record, Fierceton's complaints about her mother's boyfriend and prescription drug abuse had been unsubstantiated, her cousin had witnessed no abuse while living with the Morrisons at a time prior to the incident, and he had learned that Fierceton "had regular temper tantrums, beyond the normal range for an adolescent". Or whatever our kind of contemporary version of it is. We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? who was, I believe now, the acting provost. [2] She was also working two jobs, as a policy fellow with Philadelphia City Council and another interning in social work at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. I think this is a conversation not necessarily for people who are still in question about what happened here. ", 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. Theres no cell phone reception in the basement. Joining is simple and doesnt need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. Aviv tells the story of Mackenzie Fierceton, a former student at the University of Pennsylvania. Theyre not on a website. [3] The change in her living situation greatly complicated her college plans as she had no financial resources of her own. And eventually they filed a big wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020. And so can you talk a little bit about your research? Doctors diagnosed her with epilepsy, telling her the head injuries that had resulted in her earlier hospitalizations may have been a contributing factor to her developing it. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. So you applied for your masters in social work and there was a question of whether to check the, what Ive learned is called the FGLI box: first-generation, low-income. A 24-year-old Rhodes Scholar has left the prestigious program after being accused of lying about growing up poor, reports say. [2] Katie Couric had Fierceton as a guest on her podcast a week later. 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. She and a separate witness said records of child-welfare agencies from years earlier are not easy to obtain. "How much does one have to suffer to have value? Right. Mackenzie Fierceton was deposed after seeking justice for a mature student, Cameron Driver, 38. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. 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. What happened the night before? 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. Are we going to see these injuries? But that was definitely a driving force for why I decided, ultimately, to withdraw because I felt like: OK, federal prison is no joke. 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. 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. Is that your experience with it as well? 's office explained the decision to drop the charges against Morrison as based on new evidence that had emerged. And it was also the community was kind of divided. Nor is she obligated to meet their expectations of her. And that dynamic, I would say, [laughs] probably played a big part in all of this. Photograph by Robbie Lawrence for The New Yorker Mackenzie Fierceton grew up in a middle-class suburb of St. Louis. 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. "She was falling apart under the academic stresses at school and was exhausted, and I believe looking for an out." RG: That was Mackenzie Fierceton and thats our show. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. Attached were copies of the Missouri court orders expunging Morrison's arrest and removing her name from the DSS registry. And my biological family did not fit those stereotypes, and I think that was really hard for people to process. So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. Its account focused on the Rhodes controversy, discussing her and Driver's suits near the end, and recalling some other recent instances of academic dishonesty, including one 2009 Harvard student whose largely fabricated high school records were only discovered when he had applied for a Rhodes Scholarship. What about Rhodes? Another program official that year recalls Fierceton as seeming more vulnerable than she let on; after picking her up from the hospital following bone surgery that year, she noticed that Fierceton had a very light winter coat and few other possessions. So I started while I was an undergrad and was taking classes at the same time. He was earlier arrested in Chattanooga, Tennessee. On Saturday afternoon, Fierceton said she found herself in a Zoom meeting for several hours with 10 other finalists from this region. So yes, I know that is me. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of. And so I wanted to start with where things really started to unravel for you. I identify with the FGLI umbrella term and definitely being a low-income student, but I've never really called myself a standalone first-generation. First of all, thats one box? 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. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. The fact that they even challenged that really does expose a lot of whats going on here because I assume in their mind, theyre saying: Well, she went to this private school; she had a nice house; her mom probably drove a nice car maybe you even drove a decent car! 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. And its mentioned briefly. Penn's Office of Student Conduct recommended withholding her master's degree until she paid a fine; both conditions were dropped but a notation about the investigative finding remains in her transcript. In her reading, Tracy came across an article that congratulated Mackenzie Fierceton, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, on being named a Rhodes Scholar. Fierceton considered dropping out, but "if I truly can't do this, where am I supposed to return to? 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. Just like some basic questions [laughs] and then a lot of detailed questions about my application. Mackenzie Morrison was born Mackenzie Terrell but took her mother's name after her father, Billy Terrell, who worked in soap operas, left. And I ended up reading the comments, and the comments were just horrendous. 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. Penn's report notes that Fierceton disputes this account. [7] The charges against Lovelace were dropped later for lack of evidence. [1] It appended both the Rhodes report and OSC's as exhibits. [3] In high school there, Fierceton was a model student. verbally. [2] Fierceton and her mentor reconstructed the conversation and transcribed it; the university has claimed it is inaccurate but the mentor stands by it. And then theres the part that felt like: I have no idea whats going to convince these people if I gave them medical records, I gave them forensic photos of me taken in the hospital, I gave them again like corroboration from professors of like how I described myself, from leaders in the FIGLY community. 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. Is that what sent you into a surreal state? MF: So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. And where are you at school? Mackenzie Fierceton was named Penn's 2021 Rhodes Scholar. [2], The trust notified Fierceton at the beginning of 2021 that it was conducting an investigation into the allegations. 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). I have all these three kinds of different rationale and corroborations. And thats actually one of the things that, if there was any doubt whatsoever about this story, in some ways it was settled by that. How did you get to school? She was abused, but there is not enough blood." [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. 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. 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. Yeah. Then the Philly paramedics couldnt figure out how to get to the building and then they couldnt get me out. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. Fierceton clarified the details in question and Ruderman said she understood better. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? 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. We want to think of it as: If you were ever rich, youre always rich; if youre ever poor, youre always poor. But I guess I cant say for sure. RG: Yeah. So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. 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. She shared with the former screenshots of online chats and printouts of emails with representatives of the, The Rhodes Trust report found that the Penn police had no records of any calls to them from Fierceton about this. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. Her mother had no explanation for the injuries, other than saying perhaps she had done it to herself. Its a very under-researched field. One home, during her junior year of high school, was so "toxic" and crammed with other foster kids that she left for weeks at a time, sleeping each night on a carousel of couches at the homes of various friends, she said. So Rachel had it and Penn disputed it. "[25], "I cannot avoid the sense that Mackenzie is being faulted for not having suffered enough", Norton told The New Yorker. 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