Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. But it did open with these literary elements of what I was feeling like, and the experience I was having in those moments. Penn's report notes that Fierceton disputes this account. White, who had apparently drafted the offer, added a sentence to it requiring Fierceton to say she was agreeing to it "voluntarily and without pressure" after she learned that Fierceton was complaining to professors that she felt Penn was pressuring her to do this. 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. I had no idea what she already knew. Right. And I turned over all this information to his widow. 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. Thats why Im pausing to let her catch her breath. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. box, it's like you have to fit yourself in, saying: Are you the first in your family to attend? Mackenzie Fierceton was deposed after seeking justice for a mature student, Cameron Driver, 38. 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. 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. And many more vicious sentiments. Have you ever heard of her case? 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. Raised in Chesterfield, Missouri, a West County suburb of St. Louis, she attended and graduated from the Whitfield School in Creve Coeur. Within days of the article being published, the universitys general counsel was in touch with Mackenzies mother. RG: So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? She is poor, but she has not been poor for long enough. 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. And then again there was trouble getting him out of the basement. Cause Ive just wanted to go on with my life and, you know, live it. And I ultimately didnt end up responding because I got a serious threats from Penn that if I didnt withdraw that they were going to come after my undergrad degree, and launch proceedings to revoke my undergrad degree, and never give me my M.S.W which I was supposed to graduate with in May 2021, I have not yet received that diploma if I didnt withdraw from the Rhodes and sign an NDA. RG: so that people have the background there. 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. 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. And especially, again, like these stereotypes of black and brown, low-income families, the knee-jerk reaction is like: Oh, well, theyre unequipped to be a parent. And she was shocked. [3] The change in her living situation greatly complicated her college plans as she had no financial resources of her own. Penn student and Rhodes Scholarship recipient Mackenzie Fierceton filed a lawsuit against the University following its investigation into allegations that questioned her status as a first-generation, low-income student and survivor of abuse.. 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. And we have our own specific grad school definitions. Mackenzie Fierceton described herself as s a "queer,. Her supporters at Penn have called for the university's acting provost, Beth Winkelstein, to be held accountable for her role in the investigation, which has been characterized as a continuation of the abuse. 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". [2], A week later, Fierceton received an email asking her to attend a meeting over Zoom with Winkelstein. [14], The publicity led 150 Penn students to stage a walkout from classes to demonstrate in support of Fierceton. There were so many there are, I guess I should say so many moving pieces. We dont believe you. [2], Fierceton shared the information she had with Logan, who in turn took it to a law firm that investigated further. He died of his heart attack within 12 minutes of arrival at the hospital. And so, yes, if the student, then, is no longer useful, I could imagine it turning. In November 2020, Mackenzie Fierceton was one of just 32 students to be awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. But that was definitely a driving force for why I decided, ultimately, to withdraw because I felt like: OK, federal prison is no joke. At the end of the march they were addressed by Fierceton and other FGLI students. "[3][l], The Chronicle story led to nationwide coverage,[17][18] most of which framed the narrative as Penn and the Rhodes Trust had in their reports, depicting Fierceton as yet another exposed fraud. And so can you talk a little bit about your research? In any event, The University of Oxford, where Mackenzies doing her Ph.D., has remained supportive, and in the wake of The New Yorker investigation, and the resulting protests from students and faculty, Penn lifted the hold on her degree. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. She was then admitted to Penn on a full scholarship, where she identified as a first-generation low-income (FGLI) student despite her background due to her estrangement from her parents and lack of financial support from them, a classification she says Penn officials told her was acceptable in those circumstances. How much research has been done on the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline? "[2], When Fierceton returned to the St. Louis area on vacations and breaks, she stayed with friends. MF: Yeah. Mackenzie told the police her mother had pushed her down the stairs and struck her in the face. I think this is a conversation not necessarily for people who are still in question about what happened here. The teacher recalled that she had black eyes and hair matted with blood, a description corroborated by a nurse who saw her on arrival after an ambulance brought her to nearby Mercy Hospital St. Louis. Who will spend some significant amount of time in poverty. She told them she felt that would be more likely to get an unbiased answer that way. Rather than it being for the purpose of benefiting the students themselves. RG: Talk just a little bit about that case . 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. RG: And so youre becoming rather inconvenient to the university at that point , RG: I would assume, which plays into the way that universities and elite structures think of diversity, I think. 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. 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. 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? Because that was one of the ones that really blew my mind. in America. [24], In a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university said the New Yorker article "did not accurately reflect" the university's investigation of the issues raised by the Rhodes Trust. And then the focus shifted to the second box. And MacKenzie is the only one whos allowed to answer these questions. "Fuck thatI don't have [a family]" she said later. She had wanted to appeal the Rhodes committee's findings, but Rafaelle advised her that Penn had hinted to him that it might consider referring the matter to federal prosecutors on the grounds that she had lied about being FGLI on her Free Application for Federal Student Aid form. [1]:95, Judge Kristine Allen Kerr ultimately held for Morrison. 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. 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 I was having flashbacks to cross-examinations and depositions Id given about this which later made sense, because we found out that Wendy White had spoken with one of Carries defense lawyers. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? So you use what you have, uh, which are the definitions that were already out there. 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. You have a good education and youre clearly smart. She had seen no signs of abuse in the relationship and considered Fierceton to be the dominant personality in it. Whereas a social worker comes into a poor home and looks around and sees just the normal poverty that our system has foisted on people and says: Oh, well, clearly this is somebody that needs to be stripped out of here. Mhmm. [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. What kind of a group is that? It recommended the scholarship be rescinded. "I really don't have words,'" she told a mentor at the Penn Women's Center. [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. Anything interesting in that that you noticed? ")[3], The OSC report also concluded that nothing in her academic record warranted the revocation of either degree. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. 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. The New Yorker reported that Fierceton reported this to Penn's campus police, fearing that her mother had somehow found out where she was living. Her history teacher described the incident this way: She showed up at my classroom door with a bloodied and battered face and then fainted., Mackenzie was hospitalized. And I kind of felt like things were resolved until the next week when there was more [laughs] more downhill event. And where are you at school? [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. And if you havent already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. MF: So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. 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.. She entered foster care only at the age of 17, after making a complaint of abuse against Dr. Morrison a complaint that a court later found not to be credible. Fierceton. And we have this idea of what a person looks like who commits a crime or who gets arrested for child abuse. MF: She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. 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. And I didnt get an answer. What about Rhodes? 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). "[2], On her application, Fierceton recounted her background and the unexpected way it led to her becoming a foster child. MF: Yeah, so Penn First for the whole FGLI community. That is when I would trace it back to. My life is over, Im in the hospital, Im at rock bottom. I cant remember if it was in the Rhodes essay or in another essay that, in hindsight, you wouldve tightened up. Some people were very much on my side; some people were very much, I think, in that sort of cognitive dissonance of: This cant be true because if it can, then Im in danger. Right. 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. Penn also noted that her name change had the effect, whether she had intended it or not, of making her background harder to research. 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. They demanded that the university remove the notation from her file. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? Thats the reality of it, but we dont want to think of it that way. So they didnt ask about that in this meeting. "You can't couch-surf in a pandemic", Norton said. She began to realize that she had no sense of identity. Now-provost Beth Winkelstein told this person: I know youre here as a supporter for MacKenzie, but you cannot speak. [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. And, honestly, first-generation is never something Ive really identified with fully. I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. Youre welcome to talk to Penn Police or their Division of Special Services or the Womens Center, or any program that Ive been involved in, or people that have been involved in supporting me who can corroborate this. 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. [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. And I turned over all this information to his widow. 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 I felt pretty confident. Penn acknowledged that, for that reason, it could not state definitely that those events did not take place but still, "the way [she] presents this information invites the reader to speculate when she herself states she does not have a clear recollection of the nature of this event, if it occurred. 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. [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. 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. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? [2], Local police were called. [Laughs.] We want to think of it as: If you were ever rich, youre always rich; if youre ever poor, youre always poor. At Oxford University, Mackenzie Fierceton will conduct research on the "foster care-to-prison" pipeline. She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. Why were you in the hospital that long? [2] Morrison's bond was originally set at $40,000, but lowered to $5,000 over prosecutors' strenuous objections. RG: Like questioning: How much blood? 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. At first she went to a friend's home in Ohio and then returned to the Philadelphia area as May and graduation approached to live with a classmate's family. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. So you use what you have, uh, which are the definitions that were already out there. Fierceton began secretly documenting physical and psychological abuse by her mother, a radiologist, during her high school years. Did you go into foster care? She also alleged that Penn had on many occasions failed to follow its own disciplinary policies in its investigation of her.[16]. And its funny, cause it just made me so frustrated and I actually went back and read it. RG: I want to talk about where you think that pushback came from. I identify with the FGLI umbrella term and definitely being a low-income student, but Ive never really called myself a standalone first-generation. Theres people who span all different kinds of experiences. And we do know for sure that she was in touch with the university. And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? 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. It didnt, though, to the University of Pennsylvania. A former teacher in elementary school recalled that in one of those calls, Morrison made a reference to an earlier discussion of Fierceton's mental illness; the teacher did not remember any such conversation. 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. At first she explained Fierceton's injuries as either having been caused by an intruder or somehow self-inflicted, then said her daughter had fallen downstairs while she was trying to help her get some chewing gum out of her hair. 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