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. 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. "She has become emboldened over time, and has been successful with her evolving tale for 6 yrs. But it doesnt mean you were always low-income, just that you are now. 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. 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. Photograph by Robbie Lawrence for The New Yorker Mackenzie Fierceton grew up in a middle-class suburb of St. Louis. RG: And what was the first-generation community like on campus? [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 my biological family did not fit those stereotypes, and I think that was really hard for people to process. "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 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. Is that your experience with it as well? Theyre not on a website. She kept a journal, writing that she was in so much pain from her bruised ribs that she could barely breathe. Thats why Im pausing to let her catch her breath. [2] The psychologist testified that she had seen both mother and daughter during 2007 and 2008. "I think that we could contribute to the community, the broader Philadelphia community, and the West Philadelphia community more positively, instead of doing things that are not only undermining them but are actively policing them, and end up creating and perpetuating more violence," she told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university's student newspaper. 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. RG: That was Mackenzie Fierceton and thats our show. And I asked in the email exchange: Is this about the anonymous email? One home, during her junior year of high school, was so "toxic" and crammed with other foster kids that she left for weeks at a time, sleeping each night on a carousel of couches at the homes of various friends, she said. 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? 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. Cause then you cant think that it could be you. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. Thank you so much for having me. She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. It didnt have any facts of the case. At Norton's request, a fellow political science colleague, Rogers Smith, who while at Yale had chaired that university's undergraduate disciplinary committee, agreed to represent Fierceton during what he called "a very unusual process". And if you read it aloud, its almost exactly the length of the phone call. But the outline of the story is this: Mackenzie was raised in a wealthy St. Louis suburb by a single mother who was repeatedly abusive, according to two state agencies. Her mother was a doctor and Fierceton attended a prep school, but she was. Enough blood? I said were almost done. Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. RG: And do you know Linda Tirado? Yeah. And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. [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. Yeah. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? But part of it is funding decisions. Yeah, so Penn First for the whole FGLI community. And she was shocked. 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. 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. But Mackenzie Fierceton is not a liar. And that is, I felt very defeated too. Fierceton applied for the Rhodes Scholarship with assistance from Penn's Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. In the transcript, I wrote it was really just focused on: What happened the night you went into foster care? And you experienced that yourself, right? . Teachers at Whitfield who had been supportive while she was there dropped out of touch. 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. 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. [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. So I could imagine why at some point youd be like, you know what, Im just not going to keep taking Ls here. 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? It's a hard scholarship to win, but Fierceton. And if you havent already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And, in this case, almost everyone who was involved in the university administration are upper middle class or very wealthy, highly academically educated white women. 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. Mackenzies critics even began nitpicking how much blood was in her hair while she was in the intensive care unit. [1]:95, Judge Kristine Allen Kerr ultimately held for Morrison. Like questioning: How much blood? [2][e], A spokesman for the D.A. RG: Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. So one question was: Are you from a low-income family? [H]onestly, first-generation is never something I've really identified with fully. And I started interviewing people who were in the class where he died and who were in nearby classes where he died, who knew him, and paramedics who were Penn paramedics and just as many people as I could. Fierceton, according to Penn's response, had learned during her parents' divorce how to make calls to the child-abuse hotline and that teachers were mandatory reporters. And whats the difference between the U.S. and English system? [3], Before that happened, Fierceton withdrew from the scholarship on her own. [5] Lovelace was also arrested and charged with sexual abuse. So therefore that doesnt fit their understanding of low-income, despite the fact that your mother was no longer your legal guardian, youre a ward of the state. [2] Ruderman's story, published the next day, began:[13]. So, yes. 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? Right. And I also think we have this racist and classist notion of who can be an abuser or who can cause harm. 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. So Im not sure how much could have been missing. RG: I want to talk about where you think that pushback came from. Are we going to see these 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. And you saw that playing out right away, right, when your biological mother was first arrested? I was like: Great. What kind of a group is that? An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. Logan filed her wrongful death suit in August 2020, alleging Penn was negligently responsible for her husband's death through failing to make Caster properly accessible and not making SP2 develop an emergency response protocol. 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 . Instead, I want to talk more about what this says about the system, that something so seemingly irrational could be produced by this system, and actually could be predicted to be produced by this system in some ways. 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. RG: or in graduate school. And I just want to read this for people. "[2], When Fierceton returned to the St. Louis area on vacations and breaks, she stayed with friends. Thats the reality of it, but we dont want to think of it that way. 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 she had gone to a private school growing up. Our producer is Zach Young. Cause I had assumed it was her. And I was actually really nervous about doing any press for this reason. 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! She bounced from one foster home to the next. RG: so that people have the background there. And I dont remember exactly what their statement was, but they disputed it. Penn, by questioning so much of Fierceton's story, was making itself "complicit in a long campaign of continuing abuse", she added. Yeah. 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., RG: 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. RG: Right. So first-generation and/or low-income, again, is the acronym. And back in high school, it was a similar thing. And we have our own specific grad school definitions. So you use what you have, uh, which are the definitions that were already out there. RG: Like questioning: How much blood? 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. MF: Its hard to say. [c] Chewing was difficult as well, and she had a feeding tube inserted. I identify with the FGLI umbrella term and definitely being a low-income student, but Ive never really called myself a standalone first-generation. 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. RG: And so, like I mentioned earlier, I dont want to go over too much of the history that led up to your battle with Penn and with the Rhodes trust, because people can find that in The New Yorker article that came out recently, you went over that in some pretty decent length; in Katie Courics podcast in a recent interview there. So Im not sure how much could have been missing. 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. And theyll openly talk about this. He was earlier arrested in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And so where is your story now? Her mother was arrested and charged with child abuse, but those charges were later dropped; state courts later expunged the arrest and ordered her removed from the state's child-abuser registry. 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. We need to stay on task. [2], Shortly after the Rhodes investigation began, Rafaelle was informed that Penn was proposing to revoke Fierceton's bachelors on the grounds of her apparent self-misrepresentation. The New Yorker reported it was written by an anonymous sender who displayed a great deal of familiarity with Mackenzies childhood that showed Mackenzie engaging in typical upper middle-class childhood activities, like horseback riding and going to the beach.. And so they had to see some benefit to them in doing this. "Fuck thatI don't have [a family]" she said later. [2], To White, Morrison repeated her story that her daughter had fabricated the abuse allegations. Attached were copies of the Missouri court orders expunging Morrison's arrest and removing her name from the DSS registry. 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. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. She added the additional detail that at the time of her first hospitalization, Fierceton had just failed her first AP Chemistry test. 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. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. MF: You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. Anything interesting in that that you noticed? He died after a medical emergency in a basement of UPenn's Caster Building in 2018. 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 like you said, like, yes, obviously I was looking in a mirror, and I knew I was looking in a mirror. But teachers noticed that Fierceton often seemed physically uncomfortable in her mother's presence, and a close friend noted that she was often injured. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? Betsy Reed is The Intercepts editor in chief. She feared that her mother had inflicted the injuries, perhaps out of jealousy that Lovelace was attracted to her, even as it seemed to Fierceton that Morrison was "offering [her] up to him on a silver platter". I think its a reflection of the systemic prejudices . My understanding is there were two anonymous emails. At her request Penn kept her contact information out of the school's directory on its website. Mhmm. By those standards, the standards of real family, not one person I'm related to by blood meets those requirements or even comes close." Its a very under-researched field. The notation in her transcript remains. 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 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. And so, Mackenzie, you and I were just talking offline. Last edited on 10 February 2023, at 00:35, Learn how and when to remove this template message, the state's Department of Social Services, tortious interference with a business relationship, negligent infliction of emotional distress, "Verified Answer and New Matter to Plaintiff's Complaint", "How an Ivy League School Turned Against a Student", "Deconstructed: Mackenzie Fierceton on Her Battle With UPenn", "Ex Alderman Newsletter 168 And Chesterfield 113", "St. Luke's physician charged with felony child abuse", "Abuse charges against former St. Luke's physician are dropped", "Henry Lovelace, owner of Wild Horse Fitness Passes Away", "Former St. Louis woman who spent time in foster care named Rhodes Scholar", "Thousands petition U. to cut ties with Philly PD, reform militarized campus 'police state', "Penn student who aged out of foster care wins prestigious Rhodes Scholarship", "Following public outcry, Penn lifts hold on former Rhodes Scholar Mackenzie Fierceton's master's degree", "University Mourns Loss of Cameron Avant Driver", "Student loses Rhodes scholarship over allegations of lying about her foster care upbringing", "Former St. Louis-area student loses Rhodes scholarship over 'false narratives', "Student Misleads With Story of Poverty and Abuse and Wins Rhodes ScholarshipNow, the Media Is Defending Her", "Did This Rhodes Wannabe Lie About Her Background? 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