Morrison had told the admitting physician that she had not been present when her daughter was hurt but believed she had fallen down the stairs in the house, which the hospital accepted as the likely cause, even though her fearfulness was also noted. 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 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 a 25-minute conversation, she went into detail with Fierceton about her past and what she planned to do with her scholarship. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Mackenzie Fierceton claimed that Penn officials targeted the grad student for retaliation after she became a key witness in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the university. So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. But it was definitely something I saw happening sort of this funneling of kids from the child welfare to criminal justice system. "She was a foster child, but not for long enough. MF: 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. But Mackenzie Fierceton is not a liar. [2], Almost three months later, The New Yorker ran a longer article about Fierceton, which had taken the magazine eight months to report and fact-check. And so I was like, of course, Im going to respond again. She was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome and released after three weeks. She told Brandt it was her mother, and asked her to keep Morrison from coming to her room. Which as Im sure youve learned since is a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of poverty . The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. 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. And she had gone to a private school growing up. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? 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 it started with, this paragraph-and-a-half of waking up in the hospital and then, like you said, looking at my face, not recognizing myself, and kind of describing what I felt like and what the room looked like. Thank you so much for having me. But I guess I cant say for sure. 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. So one of the questions that you mentioned that they asked was about your essay , 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. And I turned over all this information to his widow. This made Fierceton feel as if she were being watched for anything she did that could be used against the state's case by her mother. What kind of a group is that? And thats an unfortunate reality so many survivors experience, not having a lot of documentation. RG: Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. 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. @RachelAviv for @NewYorker [Laughs.]. MF: Yes, definitely. 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. [2], Morrison retained William Margulis, a former member of Whitfield's board who had sent four of his children there, including one of her daughter's classmates, as her attorney. And I ended up reading the comments, and the comments were just horrendous. "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. RG: Right. 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.. So I was like: OK, fine. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of. And its no offense its not like the most profound . [2] Winkelstein, who has a Ph.D. in bioengineering and has studied injuries,[3] then proceeded to interrogate Fierceton at length about her abuse and hospitalization, in a manner that led Fierceton to believe that not only did Winkelstein doubt her story but had spoken with Morrison. So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. Did they make that threat in writing or was that . Like, it seemed like an airtight case from my perspective. [2], The next morning, when Fierceton awoke, Morrison told her she was taking her car keys and telling the school she was sick. 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. She didnt know he was in the basement. 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: Penn officials, of course, have said the interview was appropriate. The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. At first there was actually, there was contention. 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. And at the time I was like: Why what? Thats not in question. But it was definitely something I saw happening sort of this funneling of kids from the child welfare to criminal justice system. And the staff member saying like: I understand, can you please give Mackenzie an estimate of how many questions are left? 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. 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. 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. The nurse also reported bruises all over Fierceton's body, in different stages of healing, considered an indicator of possible physical abuse. I cant remember if it was in the Rhodes essay or in another essay that, in hindsight, you wouldve tightened up. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. And eventually they filed a big wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020. 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. 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. The university, in its response to Mackenzies lawsuit, referred to Mackenzies mother as an accomplished physician and claimed that a court had found her allegations not to be credible. The court had ordered Fierceton and Morrison into family therapy, but the former was too afraid of the latter to do it. 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. Have you ever heard of her case? 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. 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 like you said, like, yes, obviously I was looking in a mirror, and I knew I was looking in a mirror. And then the other question was: Are you the first in your family to attend college? RG: Is that what sent you into a surreal state? 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. And so can you talk a little bit about your research? But when youre filling out a box where its yes or no and theres no more information or kind of! box [laughs], its like you have to fit yourself in, saying: Are you the first in your family to attend? students, defines first generation broadly, including students who have a strained or limited relationship with a parent who has graduated from college. Penn filed a 130-page response two weeks later, denying all her allegations of wrongdoing and saying that the university officials and co-defendants who had investigated the case were unaware of the Driver lawsuit when they did. Morrison's name was therefore ordered removed from the DSS registry. RG: Did they make that threat in writing or was that . 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. Like one of them was describing a biological child in a house as another foster child, and something about a half-brother or something.What were those and how were those errors kind of deployed against you? 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. And I dont remember exactly what their statement was, but they disputed it. They reported it to the state's child-abuse hotline. Theres people who span all different kinds of experiences. Yes, definitely. [2], Two months later the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. You have a good education and youre clearly smart. Rather than it being for the purpose of benefiting the students themselves. The department of social services substantiated Mackenzies allegations, as did the Missouri Child Abuse and Neglect Review Board, which is an independent state panel. The teen said she was sent to. RG: Right. Also, there was a delay in getting the Penn Police there because they didnt know where the building was. RG: Penn didnt respond to a request for comment, but in its response to Mackenzies lawsuit, they write: Penn denies that there are accessibility problems with the Caster Building which contributed to Mackenzies medical emergency or to [Cameron] Drivers death. [Laughs.] I had no idea what she already knew. Within days of the article being published, the universitys general counsel was in touch with Mackenzies mother. RG: Right. And I was the one who uncovered my classmates death. Fierceton clarified her identity during the interview:[4]. Fierceton. And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? 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. And please go and leave us a rating or a review it helps people find the show. 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. What happened the night before? And then to be so unanimously disbelieved and, at that point, this article was like a paragraph and a half. 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.. 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. You didnt grow up in crumbling projects your entire life. How old were you when you were applying to college? Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. 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. And we spoke for a long time and I went through everything I had found. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. It didnt, though, to the University of Pennsylvania. RG: And that feels like one of them where it feels like the system is willfully misunderstanding reality in order to bend it in their direction. MF: And its mentioned briefly. Seeing other students consult their parents for minor decisions made her feel left out; she avoided telling people she had been in foster care before college. Thats why Im pausing to let her catch her breath. 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. 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. And my biological family did not fit those stereotypes, and I think that was really hard for people to process. And its mentioned briefly. Mackenzies critics even began nitpicking how much blood was in her hair while she was in the intensive care unit. "She was falling apart under the academic stresses at school and was exhausted, and I believe looking for an out." "I really don't have words,'" she told a mentor at the Penn Women's Center. 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? And so thats the low-income box. We dont believe you. How long were you in the hospital? And The New Yorker article also alluded to a few things that you had gotten loose with in a couple of paragraphs. And so, Mackenzie, you and I were just talking offline. What kind of a group is that? And Penn is still claiming that those are fake journals. And I suspected that it was about this anonymous email. And that is part of what felt like it gave me such a home, is because we had these sort of underlying shared experiences, but all came from different backgrounds to an extent, and all still supported and accepted one another. 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. 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. She also alleged that Penn had on many occasions failed to follow its own disciplinary policies in its investigation of her.[16]. 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. 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