Later, another Whitfield parent Morrison had talked to told this woman that she believed Fierceton had done this to get admitted to an Ivy League college, an idea which she found preposterous. The situation was further complicated by a lack of cell phone service in the basement, requiring students to team up and verbally relay information from the 9-1-1 operator to a professor performing CPR on Driver and back to a student posted just outside the door. box, it's like you have to fit yourself in, saying: Are you the first in your family to attend? My life is over, Im in the hospital, Im at rock bottom. Mackenzie Fierceton, C'20, has been awarded a 2021 Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at the University of Oxford. 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][4][15], After learning this, Fierceton and a fellow SP2 student began doing research. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. And Im Ryan Grim, D.C. bureau chief of The Intercept. RG: Did they make that threat in writing or was that . 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. [7] The charges against Lovelace were dropped later for lack of evidence. And how much confidence do you have that that anonymous complainer was Carrie, your biological mother. So first-generation and/or low-income, again, is the acronym. [5] She posted it before Fierceton's release from the hospital, and once free began calling Fierceton's friends and former teachers, telling them that Fierceton was having issues and had made it appear Morrison had beaten her. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. It didnt, though, to the University of Pennsylvania. And to me, I'm like I am a household of one, so I am the only person in my family. [3] In high school there, Fierceton was a model student. She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. Did you go into foster care? It called attention to claims, such as the one in her application essay, that by the time she was six she "knew every police officer in my county by their first name", a claim Fierceton herself admitted was untrue and born of her fear of her biological family when she wrote it. MF: And its mentioned briefly. 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! Rather than it being for the purpose of benefiting the students themselves. And I havent been on any of the Penn websites. 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. The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. MF: Yeah. In addition to the complaint she had made against Lovelace, a similar complaint to police that her mother was abusing prescription drugs also did not yield any evidence to support it. 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. And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. A Rhodes Scholar who claimed that she had grown up in the foster system has lost her scholarship after an investigation revealed that she grew up in a middle-class family and attended a $30,000-per-annum private school. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. So those questions came like later on and were really a part of the initial interrogation. 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. It recommended that Fierceton's master's be withheld until she paid a $4,000 fine and that her academic transcript carry a notation that she was sanctioned for her "objective inaccuracy" in answering the first-generation question on her application. Thank you so much for having me. 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. I had never heard of FGLI, but these labels resonated with a story I was still trying to process. Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. RG: Penn officials, of course, have said the interview was appropriate. She got straight A's, served in student government, managed the field hockey team, played varsity soccer, and volunteered to assist with the local Special Olympics. [2], Fierceton was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania (commonly known as Penn) on a full scholarship, arranged through QuestBridge. RG: I want to talk about where you think that pushback came from. When I came to Penn and saw all of these students who were living that life, there was a sense of community and solidarity amongst us, which was very powerful for me because I just felt so out of place. And I think its striking to read that back and just see how clearly distressed and distraught I was in continuing to push on that series of questions about a really traumatic experience. 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. It, too, alleged that Fierceton was misrepresenting herself as having been poor and grown up entirely in foster care, with many photos of Fierceton as a little girl on the beach and riding horses, and other activities usually associated with affluence. And back in high school, it was a similar thing. It seemed like there was a lack of internal emergency protocols within our grad school, the School of Social Policy & Practice. Cause then you cant think that it could be you. When they did, they were unable to get stretchers or backboards down Caster's stairways or elevators as there was insufficient space. [2] Katie Couric had Fierceton as a guest on her podcast a week later. 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. If you havent read the story yet, I highly recommend pausing this, and giving it a read first, because I try not to go over too much of the same territory in my interview with her. [2], To White, Morrison repeated her story that her daughter had fabricated the abuse allegations. [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. [2][e], A spokesman for the D.A. She told Brandt it was her mother, and asked her to keep Morrison from coming to her room. A 24-year-old Rhodes Scholar has left the prestigious program after being accused of lying about growing up poor, reports say. Because thats not how we understand poverty. "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." And even now, The New Yorker quotes a lot from my childhood journals describing my abuse. Yeah. was truthful, Rafaelle feared that Penn might share its information with the government and if the U.S. Attorney decided to pursue a prosecution, it would be likely to last a long time and consume much of her attention. So that was what that specific sentence in The New Yorker was referencing is this kind of condensing this group of people and to one sentence. "She was falling apart under the academic stresses at school and was exhausted, and I believe looking for an out." The reality star has struggled with drug addiction for years. 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. That night at home, Morrison, who had apparently learned of the report, confronted her daughter about it. Theres a lot of chaos. The wellness director told her she would have to notify the state's Department of Social Services (DSS) of the incident. RG: Right. 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. How much research has been done on the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline? MF: Yeah. Her sister also wrote White as well, alleging that Fierceton "deliberately tried to frame Carrie and planted 'evidence' around the house, including her own blood. If we review your medical records, are we going to see you had broken ribs and facial injuries? 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. [9] In a news release, Penn's then-president Amy Gutmann, a daughter of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who had herself been the first in her family to attend college,[11] spoke admiringly of Fierceton as "a first-generation low-income student and a former foster youth. 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. Those investigations revealed that for the first 17 years of her life, Fierceton was raised by her mother, Dr. Carrie Morrison, an accomplished physician. RG: 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. 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. She was . In April, the trust's investigative committee produced a 15-page report praising Fierceton as "gifted, driven, and charismatic" but concluding ultimately that she "created and repeatedly shared false narratives about herself", noting in particular her references to injuries she was treated for in her September 2014 hospital stay that are not reflected in her medical records. 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? And where are you at school? She helped SP2 assistant professor Toorjo Ghose draft and promote a petition in support of Police Free Penn, an activist group calling on the university to cut its ties with the Philadelphia Police Department over its poor relations with the largely black and Latin residents of the West Philadelphia neighborhoods around the university's campus, and rethink its own police department, the largest private one in the state. We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. That was Mackenzie Fierceton and thats our show. 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. After her graduation summa cum laude, political science professor Anne Norton invited Fierceton to stay with her and her partner in their large house in Northwest Philadelphia for as long as she needed to in order to complete her master's over the next year. 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. 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 when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? 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 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. But her mother wasnt finished with her. And I told them I only have a half-hour, because Im working, Im in class, and were going to go through all of this. If youre an independent student, then you should check yes to both boxes. So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. And that dynamic, I would say, [laughs] probably played a big part in all of this. Teachers at Whitfield who had been supportive while she was there dropped out of touch. And I didnt really know any information, except for that he had had a medical emergency in class and then been pronounced dead at the hospital. Fierceton joins Ryan Grim to discuss the saga of her battle with UPenn and why the Ivy Leagueinstitution seems to have so much trouble recognizing the complexity of poverty in America. And I also think we have this racist and classist notion of who can be an abuser or who can cause harm. [1] It appended both the Rhodes report and OSC's as exhibits. And if those things are true, and youre also struggling in poverty, then something is deeply wrong with the system. Thank you so much for having me. A picture of her was posted at the nurse's station should she make the attempt. Her mothers name was entered into a registry of abusers. 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. Right. Mackenzie Fierceton (born Mackenzie Terrell on August 9, 1997; later Mackenzie Morrison, [1] : 63-64, 86 ) is an American activist and graduate student currently studying at Oxford University. 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], In July the OSC concluded its investigation with a 31-page report sent to provost Wendell Pritchett examining Fierceton's background more extensively than the Rhodes Trust had. [f] Fierceton felt no ambivalence about her answer. That evening that the article came out is when I got a call from the reporter saying: I got this anonymous email that said X, Y, Z, and I wanted to let you know. "[27], For the Penn investigation, Fierceton relied on the definition on the webpage for Penn First Plus, the university's support program for FGLI students, which includes the language about the student having a "strained or limited relationship" with the graduate parent. Her junior year at Whitfield, a prestigious prep school, Mackenzie showed up to school one day in a terrible state. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? 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. And thats an unfortunate reality so many survivors experience, not having a lot of documentation. [2], For her senior year, Whitfield gave Fierceton a full scholarship. Gathering outside Caster, whose renovation they also demanded, they marched toward College Hall, where Winkelstein had taken over as interim provost following Gutmann's departure, and chanted for her ouster as well. RG: Is that what sent you into a surreal state? Thats why Im pausing to let her catch her breath. 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. 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. "How much does one have to suffer to have value? And like: Why are you considered an independent student? If youd like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. ", "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. She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. RG: Like, those two things dont fit together. 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. And so they had to see some benefit to them in doing this. Its virtually almost an unknown phenomena or to people who are working in the field, its certainly known, but theres been very little research on it, which partially complicates my Ph.D., because theres so little to draw upon. 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. Penn officials, of course, have said the interview was appropriate. 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. Its virtually almost an unknown phenomena or to people who are working in the field, its certainly known, but theres been very little research on it, which partially complicates my Ph.D., because theres so little to draw upon. Or is this something thats been overlooked? We want to think of it as: If you were ever rich, youre always rich; if youre ever poor, youre always poor. MF: Yeah. Mackenzie Fierceton described herself as s a "queer,. 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. RG: 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. In her reading, Tracy came across an article that congratulated Mackenzie Fierceton, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, on being named a Rhodes Scholar. And Im curious where you would pinpoint it, but I would guess that its The Philadelphia Inquirer story that started with an incorrect lead that said: Mackenzie Fierston grew up poor, something very close to that? Mackenzie Fierceton didn't come until much later, but with good reason. At the University of Pennsylvania, she received a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in social work through a combined five-year program. 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? Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. Asked about Lovelace's alleged sexual abuse, specifically an incident the year before where Fierceton, having fallen asleep in her mother's bed, woke to find him caressing her breasts, Morrison expressed amusement at the possibility that her boyfriend could have mistaken her teenage daughter for her; Lovelace, interviewed separately, denied all the allegations. I was in this private school with a lot of upper-middle class or wealthy white students. 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. Uh, my lawyer. This is derived from language in the federal Higher Education Act, which ties first-generation status to the educational attainment of the parent the student "regularly resides with and receives support from". 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. After Fierceton was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship during her senior year, questions about whether she had accurately represented her background led to investigations by both the Rhodes Trust and Penn that concluded she had at times suggested or failed to correct the impression left by some statements about her, and her own application essays, that she had grown up a poor foster child. So now Im looking at one American city and one English city and comparing the experiences of youth who crossed over from the child welfare system to the criminal justice system in both of those cities and kind of how the geopolitical environment and local policies and practices might impact the rate of youth crossing over and their experiences.Then its going to be a qualitative study in just really trying to understand their experiences from their voices, which is something that I often find missing from research. ", Morrison said. 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. MF: She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. But the acclaim quickly devolved into acrimony as the university and the Rhodes Trust began questioning aspects of Fiercetons backstory. RG: Thats been my understanding of it. She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. And just Deputy Provost Finkelstein saying: No. But I got a bit of pressure from Penn to do that. RG: And so where is your story now? And then the other question was: Are you the first in your family to attend college? And so they had to see some benefit to them in doing this. 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. 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. And we have this idea of what a person looks like who commits a crime or who gets arrested for child abuse. And so, yes, if the student, then, is no longer useful, I could imagine it turning. 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. So Im not sure if it was Penn who reached out to her or vice versa, which I think is also an important question in all of this. Penn, she claimed, had leaked that information to the Inquirer whose editor-in-chief was married to Louisa Shepard, the university's news director, whom she named as a defendant along with Finkelstein, White, and the university's board of trustees. Fierceton began secretly documenting physical and psychological abuse by her mother, a radiologist, during her high school years. And what happened after that? How do I do that in a succinct way when theres a very short word count and youre trying to fit everyones experience in?And so I didnt really think about: Oh, I need to say: This foster sibling who was in the foster care system. RG: 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. They had done their own investigation again, quotes on investigation and then I had submitted over a hundred pages of documents to them. [2], Fierceton refused, and a week before she withdrew from the Rhodes Scholarship, Penn's Office of Student Conduct (OSC) notified Fierceton it, too, would be investigating. That would have to be the rationale that they would have for those childhood journals to be faked. Like some students do have a story, more like me where they had some kind of separation from their family; other students their parents were doctors or lawyers or Ph.D. students in other countries, but then they came here and their degrees no longer, essentially, counted or people who are just first-generation and not necessarily low-income or people who are low-income, but not first-generation. Fierceton was released after four days. [2][4], After she had recovered from her seizure incident earlier that year, fellow students told her how difficult it had been for first responders to get to the basement of Caster Hall, where SP2 is based and holds most of its classes, and how difficult it had been to get her out. 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. Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. 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. 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 an independent student when she applied. [3] The change in her living situation greatly complicated her college plans as she had no financial resources of her own. Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. 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. Or whatever our kind of contemporary version of it is. Mackenzie Fierceton, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, has won the prestigious and extremely competitive Rhodes Scholarship, which will allow her to study at Oxford in November 2020. Right. "[25], "I cannot avoid the sense that Mackenzie is being faulted for not having suffered enough", Norton told The New Yorker. As a result she withdrew from the Rhodes Scholarship; a sympathetic Penn faculty member has paid her Oxford tuition in its stead.[2]. The nurse also reported bruises all over Fierceton's body, in different stages of healing, considered an indicator of possible physical abuse. [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.