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. She had begun to remember more about the incident, and while still not certain how it had happened recalled that before it she and her mother had been fighting about Lovelace. Or is that it separates two into one? 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. Jay Caspian Kang sounded similar themes in two different New York Times newsletters discussing Fierceton's story. And so thats the low-income box. There were three instances of attempted contact from her family or foster family. And so can you talk a little bit about your research? The show was mixed by William Stanton. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. Her mentor told Licht afterwards that "it felt like an attack on a student" and that she had never experienced anything like it. By the end of the year she was in a third foster home. Laura Flynn is our supervising producer. She is a student who found herself in a complex and easily-misunderstood situation: working towards her degree without support from family. And it just felt pretty devastating to me, because for so long I hid everything, Id been so ashamed, and I already felt so much guilt in coming forward then. Was there abuse before this? At first there was actually, there was contention. Yeah. And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? And theyll openly talk about this. . Detective Carrie Brandt, who had been planning to follow up on the hotline report at Whitfield that day, instead interviewed Fierceton at the hospital. You didnt grow up in crumbling projects your entire life. Now anyone who earns that distinction is to be commended, but the article also noted that Mackenzie had aged out of foster care . MF: So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. No, I cant. You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. So yes, I know that is me. 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. 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. She is poor, but she has not been poor for long enough. So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. And we have our own specific grad school definitions. Fierceton applied for the Rhodes Scholarship with assistance from Penn's Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. [Laughs.]. We dont believe you. Fierceton had also brought her mentor, a staff member at the university's Civic House, into the meeting; at the outset Winkelstein told the woman she could not speak or she would be disconnected immediately. 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: Yeah, so Penn First for the whole FGLI community. Penn officials, of course, have said the interview was appropriate. [2], Brandt interviewed Morrison, who described herself and her daughter as "two peas in a pod". But while OSC allowed that it may not have been Fierceton's explicit intent to deceive, she had still done so, particularly when checking "yes" on the question on her SP2 application as to whether she was the first in her family to attend college (Fierceton stands by her reliance on Penn's definitions of FGLI on the Penn Plus website and the applicable federal laws; the university says that question is "composed of ordinary words with everyday meanings, and it makes no reference to any term or definition appearing in any other publication. RG: And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . And how much did she challenge your medical condition after that beating? So they heard from her and immediately they call you into a meeting with the deputy provost at the time, Beth Winkelstein . 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. 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". Fierceton finished her Whitfield education on a scholarship while living in foster homes. So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. MF: She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. "[b] She considered running away but had a distant relationship with her father, and nowhere else she believed she could go. [H]onestly, first-generation is never something I've really identified with fully. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so that specific definition wasnt public until 2018. I think for a lot of us, we have to sort of other poverty and abuse and put it in a box, partly, to protect ourselves. Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. 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. 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. [2], Brandt noted that Morrison never asked about, or expressed concern for, her daughter's well-being. The battle between her and the school was chronicled by Rachel Aviv in the New Yorker earlier this month. [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. 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. [f] Fierceton felt no ambivalence about her answer. RG: Or whatever our kind of contemporary version of it is. 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. Her last set of foster parents had had a baby and she felt less a part of their lives. And still, it was just like: Nope. So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. And the chain of events that happened leading into foster care? 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. Her mother had no explanation for the injuries, other than saying perhaps she had done it to herself. That is when I would trace it back to. Within a year of her arrest, another St. Louis-area hospital had granted her admitting privileges, and she was able to resume her medical career. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? 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. MF: At first there was actually, there was contention. Yeah, so Penn First for the whole FGLI community. MF: So those questions really came later. RG: And did they say anything along those lines? Is that your experience with it as well? "[2][j], The evening the story ran, Ruderman called Fierceton back and told her she had received some anonymously written emails casting doubt on what she had written. MF: 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. If we review your medical records, are we going to see you had broken ribs and facial injuries? 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. Fierceton said later that she had never used the word "poor" to describe herself or her childhood. And I asked again and just said: Ive had different experiences of harassment for the last four years at Penn. Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. We want to think of it as: If you were ever rich, youre always rich; if youre ever poor, youre always poor. Those investigations revealed that for the first 17 years of her life, Fierceton was raised by her mother, Dr. Carrie Morrison, an accomplished physician. Right. 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? 2020 College graduate Mackenzie Fierceton (Photo from Mackenzie Fierceton). Theyre not on a website. [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. And I kind of felt like things were resolved until the next week when there was more [laughs] more downhill event. How long were you in the hospital? If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at. Because Im not under any illusion that Im the typical foster kid. [2][5] It did not disclose that it had done so until March. RG: Thats been my understanding of it. And Im glad that people are having the kinds of systemic discussions that are so key to all of this. Anything interesting in that that you noticed? 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. So that was what the actual poem and personal statement was about [laughs.] (Photo from Mackenzie Fierceton) Penn student Mackenzie Fierceton was selected as one of 32 American recipients of the 2021 Rhodes Scholarship, becoming Penn's 31st Rhodes scholar since the scholarship's inception in 1902.. Fierceton, a 2020 College graduate, is currently working on her . They didnt respond, though Mackenzies biological mother has denied the allegations of abuse. So those questions really came later. Right. And if you read it aloud, its almost exactly the length of the phone call. RG: Mhmm. And where are you at school? Our greatest desire is that Mackenzie chooses to live a happy, healthy, honest, and productive life, using her extraordinary gifts for the highest good." Yeah. "[4][2], Winkelstein followed up with a letter to Elizabeth Kiss, the trust's CEO, alerting her that the university had been investigating Fierceton's story, found it to have seriously diverged from the reality of her life, with the abuse allegations quite possibly fabricated. She added the additional detail that at the time of her first hospitalization, Fierceton had just failed her first AP Chemistry test. Medical records, records from child welfare services, corroborating letters from detectives and lawyers and elementary, middle, and high school teachers, childhood friends, professors basically everyone who had known me. 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. The wellness director told her she would have to notify the state's Department of Social Services (DSS) of the incident. And so, just the immediate reaction was like: Theres no way. The court had ordered Fierceton and Morrison into family therapy, but the former was too afraid of the latter to do it. I think [its] called Penn First, I believe, and it seems like you socially spent a lot of time with them? RG: And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? 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. Cops have accused the MTV star of stalking as well as violation of an order of protection. 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 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. Fine. And Im glad that people are having the kinds of systemic discussions that are so key to all of this. [3], By the end of the interview Fierceton was crying. 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. Right. [2], At the end of 2013, in the middle of her sophomore year, Fierceton was admitted to St. Luke's, where her mother worked, with a head injury. Have you ever heard of her case? Thats why Im pausing to let her catch her breath. And to me, I'm like I am a household of one, so I am the only person in my family. This could happen to me. Fierceton earned her bachelor's degree in political science from the College of Arts & Sciences and is . 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. It didnt, though, to the University of Pennsylvania. And we do know for sure that she was in touch with the university. And what was the first-generation community like on campus? In early 2022, after stories about her struggle with Penn and the Rhodes Trust received national attention from stories in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New Yorker, commentators took the university, and American elite higher education in general, to task for its use of the story of Fierceton and some other recent Rhodes recipients as poverty porn and its shifting definition of an FGLI student. And that was the end of it, right? Raised in Chesterfield, Missouri, a West County suburb of St. Louis, she attended and graduated from the Whitfield School in Creve Coeur. She thought that he had been very quickly removed from the building. And many more vicious sentiments. [2] They learned that SP2 had no real protocol for an emergency situation in the building. And the theme of private school definitely came up many times over the course of the last year and a half. 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. She has a bachelor's degree in political science from Penn and was working on a master's in social work. I cant remember if it was in the Rhodes essay or in another essay that, in hindsight, you wouldve tightened up. When they did, they were unable to get stretchers or backboards down Caster's stairways or elevators as there was insufficient space. 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. And so they had to see some benefit to them in doing this. RG: Did they make that threat in writing or was that . [3], Through her attorney, Morrison gave a statement, her only one so far, on the case: "Mackenzie is deeply loved by her mom and family. She didnt know any of the circumstances of his death. I wrote a poem about the actual what the message was, which is so cheesy and Im cringing at my 17-year-old self [laughs], but it was about the healing power of gratitude. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. "[2], In December, an anonymous 22-page letter was sent to the U.S. office of the Rhodes Trust, which administers the scholarship program. If youre an independent student, then you should check yes to both boxes. She was an independent student when she applied. RG: Right. Am I right about that? 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 also think we have this racist and classist notion of who can be an abuser or who can cause harm. I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? So thats the background of him. 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. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. RG: Right. Fierceton had apparently made much of her status as a 'first generation, low income' student, an abuse survivor who aged out of foster care. They had done their own investigation again, quotes on investigation and then I had submitted over a hundred pages of documents to them. 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. She recalled showing up at the foster home with her new clothes in a plastic bag, feeling "like a passenger in my own body", she recalled later. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. And Penn is still claiming that those are fake journals. [2], Over the middle of 2020, Fierceton became active in the Black Lives Matter protests at Penn. [Laughs.] Fierceton was born August 9, 1997, under the name Mackenzie Terrell, in Danbury, Connecticut,[1] to Carrie Morrison, a physician who would later head the breast imaging department at St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield, where the couple lived. And if you havent already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And MacKenzie is the only one whos allowed to answer these questions. I think its a reflection of the systemic prejudices . And if those things are true, and youre also struggling in poverty, then something is deeply wrong with the system. Cause then you cant think that it could be you. There, she wandered the hallways until she found the history teacher, and collapsed. I n November 2020, University of Pennsylvania graduate student Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, won the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. [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. [2] The psychologist testified that she had seen both mother and daughter during 2007 and 2008. And to me, Im like I am a household of one, so I am the only person in my family. 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. Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. Mackenzie Fierceton described herself as s a "queer,. In her reading, Tracy came across an article that congratulated Mackenzie Fierceton, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, on being named a Rhodes Scholar. 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? 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 its funny, cause it just made me so frustrated and I actually went back and read it. The court granted Morrison a protection order against her former husband; Fierceton had no relationship with him from that time onward. I was in this private school with a lot of upper-middle class or wealthy white students. [2], In public, while she was at Whitfield, Morrison and her daughter seemed to evoke the Gilmore Girls, echoing that television series's main characters, a single mother and her precocious daughter with a close and strong relationship. Thats the reality of it, but we dont want to think of it that way. If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to also check out Intercepted as well as Murderville, which is now in its second season. January 7, 2022. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. We dont believe you. And when I asked her again when I was gathering all this evidence in 2020, she gave me the same answer of: I dont believe its relevant, and this box isnt relevant to admission. And back in high school, it was a similar thing. And then she hired a law firm and eventually they were doing their own investigation for several months. Ultimately, she lost her Rhodes Scholarship, and Penn withheld her masters degree, demanding a letter of apology. And my biological family did not fit those stereotypes, and I think that was really hard for people to process. She bounced from one foster home to the next. Like you said, I was called into a meeting. Uh, my lawyer. ", However, in its report, Penn notes that Fierceton had, in an essay (which it allows may not have actually been submitted) for her application for a travel, The Rhodes report acknowledged her documentation of an email she wrote to a reporter at the, Penn's investigation noted that even if Fierceton had been referring to the Chesterfield police rather than the. RG: Like, those two things dont fit together. I wrote a poem about the actual what the message was, which is so cheesy and Im cringing at my 17-year-old self [laughs], but it was about the healing power of gratitude. So you use what you have, uh, which are the definitions that were already out there. 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. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? Fierceton clarified the details in question and Ruderman said she understood better. She ruined her moms career. RG: Mhmm. Or is this something thats been overlooked? Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. And do you know Linda Tirado? The University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday announced it will stop withholding a master's degree from Mackenzie Fierceton, the former student at the center of a recent New Yorker magazine. Fellow students, their parents and Whitfield faculty also noticed signs which led them to suspect abuse. 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