RG: And do you know Linda Tirado? So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. MF: At first there was actually, there was contention. "She has become emboldened over time, and has been successful with her evolving tale for 6 yrs. The teen said she was sent to. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. But once I got out of the hospital and I learned that information, I remembered that a classmate had died in the same basement about 16 months earlier. As youve had time to sort through this, what do you think was driving Penn to go through this process, which they had to know, at some level, would cost them? Her mentor told Licht afterwards that "it felt like an attack on a student" and that she had never experienced anything like it. And thats again, like not because there isnt abuse or neglect going on in families that looked like mine, or biological families that looked like mine. in America. 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? Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb. His master's level university, Ivy College Pennsylvania, also failed to grant him the acquired master's degree . So, to cut into the interview here real quick, I wanted to add that Mackenzie is referring to a letter sent to the Rhodes Trust in December 2020. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? 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. [3], Before that happened, Fierceton withdrew from the scholarship on her own. And then as the different internships, and then I went to get my masters in social work and all of this happened, I started to see that continue in different capacities while I was in different roles, seeing that theme in this relationship between foster care and the criminal justice system. And then throughout the now a year and a half process [laughs] of different sort of invented processes that happened, eventually the university was like: OK, I guess shes low-income. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse., No, I found it before. RG: in America. That they would forward charges to the federal government of wire fraud. It quotes her as saying "If you find me dead, it was my mom. Who are your biological family? And with that, like you said, notion of: Well, theres no way that you went to private school and all of this could have still happened, or that you could be low-income now and this idea that socioeconomic status is permanent. Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb. MF: verbally. 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. So they heard from her and immediately they call you into a meeting with the deputy provost at the time, Beth Winkelstein . If youd like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. 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. And she had gone to a private school growing up. And its funny, cause it just made me so frustrated and I actually went back and read it. Theres people who span all different kinds of experiences. 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. If you speak, Im going to disconnect you from the call. 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. A picture of her was posted at the nurse's station should she make the attempt. And how much confidence do you have that that anonymous complainer was Carrie, your biological mother. So that was what the actual poem and personal statement was about [laughs.] She lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital, where she spent three days in intensive care. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? MF: You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. MF: Yeah. 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. They had done their own investigation again, quotes on investigation and then I had submitted over a hundred pages of documents to them. RG: Talk just a little bit about that case . I think [its] called Penn First, I believe, and it seems like you socially spent a lot of time with them? MF: And its mentioned briefly. Why would I do that? Yeah. I wrote a poem about the actual what the message was, which is so cheesy and Im cringing at my 17-year-old self [laughs], but it was about the healing power of gratitude. Did they make that threat in writing or was that . 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. Our greatest desire is that Mackenzie chooses to live a happy, healthy, honest, and productive life, using her extraordinary gifts for the highest good." Morrison told White in an email. Mackenzie Morrison was born Mackenzie Terrell but took her mother's name after her father, Billy Terrell, who worked in soap operas, left. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. And we cant acknowledge that, so we then have to pick apart the other pieces of it, and say that well this, this just cant be real. She ruined her moms career. A college counselor suggested she apply through QuestBridge, a nonprofit that helps qualified students in need find schools that will give them full financial support. I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. Enough blood? 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. [2], One day in September 2014, she told the history teacher about Lovelace's abuse. And they were the ones I believe and this is public now because Penn attached it to their response to the lawsuit I filed and I believe they were the first ones to mention that I had gone to private school and that they were questioning if I was low-income. And MacKenzie is the only one whos allowed to answer these questions. 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. "We would never have believed any of it if we weren't living it." In the transcript, I wrote it was really just focused on: What happened the night you went into foster care? And many more vicious sentiments. She and a separate witness said records of child-welfare agencies from years earlier are not easy to obtain. 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. [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. "Without her trauma, she didnt matter", wrote a commentator in the Tulane Hullabaloo. A University of Pennsylvania May graduate who is currently completing her master's degree at Penn has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at the University of Oxford.. Penn's 2021 Rhodes Scholar is Mackenzie Fierceton from St. Louis, currently residing in Philadelphia. I was in this private school with a lot of upper-middle class or wealthy white students. I didnt even really think about it when I checked it, because I felt like I had a lot of information that backed it up. I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. 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. "I had so much anger and grief, and I didn't want them to be affiliated in any way with this new life I was building. How much research has been done on the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline? 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? 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. And we have this idea of what a person looks like who commits a crime or who gets arrested for child abuse. RG: And how much did she challenge your medical condition after that beating? And if you read it aloud, its almost exactly the length of the phone call. Penn claims that was meant purely for purposes of the program, to attract as many students as possible who could benefit from participation in it. MF: I mean, part of it is honestly like its looking at cause we just wanted to be as thorough as possible of when [laughs] I was crying, and then I was crying and taking breaths. Im curious, having dealt with so many people along the way, who are questioning your story, how do you feel like the boxes play into this? But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. 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! And so thats the low-income box. Within days of the article being published, the universitys general counsel was in touch with Mackenzies mother. 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. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. The notation in her transcript remains. And that is, I felt very defeated too. And Im glad that people are having the kinds of systemic discussions that are so key to all of this. She kept a journal, writing that she was in so much pain from her bruised ribs that she could barely breathe. Every objective and careful reviewer of the facts in this case including the Rhodes Trust, Penns Office of Student Conduct, a faculty committee from Fiercetons graduate school at Penn, and a hearing panel consisting of faculty and students from other Penn schools concluded that Fierceton had not been truthful.. So they didnt ask about that in this meeting. 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. 2020 College graduate Mackenzie Fierceton (Photo from Mackenzie Fierceton). Fierceton says she had not failed any tests; her Whitfield transcript shows she got a B+ in the class. I tried to help as much as I could. MF: Yeah. [1] It appended both the Rhodes report and OSC's as exhibits. Its just so obvious that you fit the criteria for low-income, but it seems like they feel like you dont fit it in the spirit of how they want it. Like I just havent, really, there to be a lot of information about me publicly. 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. Deconstructed[emailprotected]theintercept.com, Photo illustration: Soohee Cho for The Intercept; Getty Images, AP, This weeks guest on Deconstructed is Mackenzie Fierceton, who was the subject of, The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. [2] Fierceton and her mentor reconstructed the conversation and transcribed it; the university has claimed it is inaccurate but the mentor stands by it. My life is over, Im in the hospital, Im at rock bottom. Michael Hayes, who had prosecuted Morrison, told the Chronicle that "The more I learned, the less certain I became about what really happened. Because that was one of the ones that really blew my mind. Uh, my lawyer. What was the response from the readers of the paper? Fierceton had apparently made much of her status as a 'first generation, low income' student, an abuse survivor who aged out of foster care. And then The New Yorker adds in parentheses that a Penn spokesperson says: Yeah, well, thats not the definition that we use. And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? [2][k], While the trust had come to seriously doubt Fierceton's claims about the severity of her injuries, OSC declined to make a determination on that. 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. And so the fact that shes continued pursuing you to me kind of demonstrates the entire case. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. And youre getting instruction from a university official that thats how youre supposed to fill it out, thats what the definition says online. After the trial ended with Morrison prevailing and the agency ordered to remove her name from the child-abuse registry, Fierceton resolved to change her last name. [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. And so I wanted to start with where things really started to unravel for you. And it has, has she stuck by that? No, I cant. Or do you think that the wheels were already in motion before that? Fellow students, their parents and Whitfield faculty also noticed signs which led them to suspect abuse. [f] Fierceton felt no ambivalence about her answer. [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. How many people kind of fit that category that you interacted with, and how many kind of fit closer to your category, not just in your own interactions, but also in your research? Our producer is Zach Young. "[20][m] A syndicated morning radio show named Fierceton its "donkey of the day". RG: And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? Like, it seemed like an airtight case from my perspective. ")[3], The OSC report also concluded that nothing in her academic record warranted the revocation of either degree. I said were almost done. 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 so, just the immediate reaction was like: Theres no way. Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. 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.. 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.. Did she lie? That would have to be the rationale that they would have for those childhood journals to be faked. And then to be so unanimously disbelieved and, at that point, this article was like a paragraph and a half. She was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome and released after three weeks. She wasn't poor and grew up in a wealthy household with a successful mother. And then very quickly turn to very specific questions about different instances of abuse. [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. In May 2022, after a lengthy article in The New Yorker drew widespread media attention to Fierceton's story, the university dropped the charge and awarded her the degree. MF: Absolutely. 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. [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. 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. Because Im not under any illusion that Im the typical foster kid. There were some pretty basic errors, such as my name, my birth name, and my birth place, and claiming that I didnt have a sibling, that I wasnt low-income, a lot of facts that were pretty easily disputed. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? [3] The change in her living situation greatly complicated her college plans as she had no financial resources of her own. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? [1]:95, Judge Kristine Allen Kerr ultimately held for Morrison. It's a hard scholarship to win, but Fierceton. The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. 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