MF: You know, I believe the first people who said that was the Rhodes Trust. Or is this something thats been overlooked? And we do know for sure that she was in touch with the university. On Saturday afternoon, Fierceton said she found herself in a Zoom meeting for several hours with 10 other finalists from this region. . And I think psychologically one way people feel safer about it is to say: No, that happens to other people. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. 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. 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. And I also think we have this racist and classist notion of who can be an abuser or who can cause harm. ", "Inside Mackenzie Fierceton's ongoing legal battle with the University", "Mackenzie Fierceton Sets the Record Straight on Losing a Rhodes Scholarship Over Accusations of 'Dishonesty', "Penn community rallies in support of former Rhodes Scholar Mackenzie Fierceton", "Universities must stop fetishizing trauma", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mackenzie_Fierceton&oldid=1138496124, controversy over representation of childhood and abuse, This page was last edited on 10 February 2023, at 00:35. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? You had mentioned that you actually made a transcript of your interview with Deputy Provost Finkelstein shortly after the conversation. MF: Yes, definitely. In the transcript, I wrote it was really just focused on: What happened the night you went into foster care? Mackenzies critics even began nitpicking how much blood was in her hair while she was in the intensive care unit. And I was in a kind of unique situation where I applied to grad school at the beginning of my sophomore year of college, because I sub-matriculated. 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. I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. She has a bachelor's degree in political science from Penn and was working on a master's in social work. 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. Smith said he believed the university had decided before it began investigating that Fierceton's abuse allegations were false and that she had fabricated them with the goal of finding an easier way into Penn or another elite school. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of. Who are your biological family? I really appreciate it. Mackenzie Fierceton, C'20, has been awarded a 2021 Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at the University of Oxford. Those investigations revealed that for the first 17 years of her life, Fierceton was raised by her mother, Dr. Carrie Morrison, an accomplished physician. [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 think youre right. Cause then you cant think that it could be you. "She was a foster child, but not for long enough. [2][4][15], After learning this, Fierceton and a fellow SP2 student began doing research. 's office explained the decision to drop the charges against Morrison as based on new evidence that had emerged. But its interesting because most of the questions are about these applications and then the second half is when it turns to these questions of the abuse. Its a very different lifestyle. So Rachel had it and Penn disputed it. Yes, it may be true that institutions like UPenn give students like Fierceton opportunities because of their story, but that does not mean her narrative is theirs for the taking. And back in high school, it was a similar thing. RG: Penn officials, of course, have said the interview was appropriate. MF: So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. Morrison's name was therefore ordered removed from the DSS registry. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. [2], Some of those Morrison talked with did believe her; a classmate of Fierceton's recalled people likening her to the protagonist of the film Gone Girl, about a Missouri woman who disappears in order to avenge herself on an adulterous husband, whom she makes it appear killed her. If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to also check out Intercepted as well as Murderville, which is now in its second season. And theres also literature thats economic literature versus sociology, different fields have different perspectives on what that relationship between foster care and the criminal justice system is and what the causes are. And then to be so unanimously disbelieved and, at that point, this article was like a paragraph and a half. I was in this private school with a lot of upper-middle class or wealthy white students. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? 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, just the immediate reaction was like: Theres no way. Yes. 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?" [2], One day in September 2014, she told the history teacher about Lovelace's abuse. Why would I do that? And youre getting instruction from a university official that thats how youre supposed to fill it out, thats what the definition says online. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. "Fuck thatI don't have [a family]" she said later. [2] Afterwards Morrison changed her daughter's last name to her own. Ultimately she decided to apply for the scholarship, in which she proposed to expand on the subject of her undergraduate thesis, the intertwining of the foster care and juvenile justice systems, to "continue to try to move forward in my life. There were so many there are, I guess I should say so many moving pieces. But it was just kind of this rapid fire of: If we look at your medical records, are we going to see you had broken ribs and severe facial injuries? [26] In the second, he wrote, "[y]ou could also conclude from Mackenzie Fierceton's story that there is no actual empathy within elite institutions unless you perfectly fit into the trauma hierarchy they have created, which preferences the types of overcoming-adversity stories they can place in a brochure. Picture: University of Pennsylvania/Instagram. Mother and daughter both told the same stories they had earlier; Morrison depicted her daughter as "willful and intense", claiming she had bought and read many books to try to help her understand the issues she said Fierceton had. [1]:115 As to her previous involvement with the child welfare system, Penn says Fierceton told them she was not certain, but she was referring either to the guardian ad litem appointed for her during her parents' divorce or an earlier incident when she and her biological parents were still living in Connecticut. 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 so where is your story now? [2], Over the middle of 2020, Fierceton became active in the Black Lives Matter protests at Penn. She thought that he had been very quickly removed from the building. And eventually they filed a big wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020. And theyll openly talk about this. [1]:95, Judge Kristine Allen Kerr ultimately held for Morrison. Jay Caspian Kang sounded similar themes in two different New York Times newsletters discussing Fierceton's story. If youd like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. 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. 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. And then instantly people started picking her story apart. What was the response from the readers of the paper? And I decided to do it cause I felt like I had nothing to lose and I ended up making gratitude lists every day for years and it really was a very healing experience for me. 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. [c] Chewing was difficult as well, and she had a feeding tube inserted. [2] When she turned 18, she formally left foster care[d] but continued living with the family whose home she was in. But I agreed to come into this Zoom meeting and this was the last day of November 2020. 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. 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. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. Mackenzie Fierceton, 23, originally from St. Louis, Missouri, possesses a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and planned to utilize the scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in social . In between those placements, she slept at friends' houses for long periods. Like questioning: How much blood? She also called herself a first-generation low-income student. And MacKenzie is the only one whos allowed to answer these questions. Ultimately, she lost her Rhodes Scholarship, and Penn withheld her masters degree, demanding a letter of apology. Was there abuse before this? DSS had originally planned to place Fierceton with one of her mother's sisters but put her in foster care after Whitfield's principal warned the agency that Fierceton would not be safe with them. 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. She ruined her moms career. 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. And I dont remember all of the questions, but it was a really intense, rapid fire of really difficult and challenging questions. 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. Yeah. And I dont remember exactly what their statement was, but they disputed it. And she ended up responding right away, and asked to get on a phone call. But it doesnt mean you were always low-income, just that you are now. What about Rhodes? Theyre not on a website. 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. 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.. You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. Thank you so much for having me. 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. Her junior year at Whitfield, a prestigious prep school, Mackenzie showed up to school one day in a terrible state. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. We dont believe you. They took photographs of Caster's staircases and elevators, and interviewed witnesses and some of the Penn paramedics who had responded. RG: Interesting. In the presence of her mother that night at their house, Mackenzie repeated the same story to a visiting caseworker, who appeared to accept it. Asked by the school's wellness director (who later told police she had seen insulting texts from Morrison on Fierceton's phone) about the reasons for the injuries, Fierceton said that she was "clumsy" but did not offer any details. What kind of a group is that? RG: or in graduate school. The mother of a friend of Fierceton's recalls that when she told Morrison on the phone that she "was not interested" in hearing what Morrison had to say, she got angry and confrontational. We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. There were definitely, Im sure. [3], By the end of the interview Fierceton was crying. What happened after you went out of the hospital? Fierceton began secretly documenting physical and psychological abuse by her mother, a radiologist, during her high school years. 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. Thats not in question. Yeah. Teachers at Whitfield who had been supportive while she was there dropped out of touch. 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. [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. Like, they want to curate a diverse experience for their well-off students, so that they can say that they had this diverse experience in college . Morrison told White in an email. Even though I had, again, written statements from two ICU nurses who took care of me saying: Yes, there was blood, [laughs] theres photographs, and there still was the argument of like, there wasnt enough blood or your face wasnt so distorted you could couldnt tell who you were. I was a teenager and I was in the hospital and I didnt have any perspective. If we review your medical records, are we going to see you had broken ribs and facial injuries? 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. Were close to done. Is that your experience with it as well? Which as Im sure youve learned since is a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of poverty . Because Im not under any illusion that Im the typical foster kid. You have a good education and youre clearly smart. [2] Morrison's bond was originally set at $40,000, but lowered to $5,000 over prosecutors' strenuous objections. [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. They had done their own investigation again, quotes on investigation and then I had submitted over a hundred pages of documents to them. Is that what sent you into a surreal state? We dont believe you. 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. 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