The dean of SP2 told Penn otherwise, but Fierceton noted that the school had never shared what its definition was. RG: Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. Detective Carrie Brandt, who had been planning to follow up on the hotline report at Whitfield that day, instead interviewed Fierceton at the hospital. According to an investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education, University of Pennsylvania student Mackenzie Fierceton lost her Rhodes scholarship and her master's degree was withheld after. It finds the definition the university's office uses, without that language, as being more determinative; Penn First, the FGLI student organization Fierceton had been involved with, also used that definition on its website for most of the time she was an undergraduate. And I was the one who uncovered my classmates death. And you experienced that yourself, right? Michael Hayes, who had prosecuted Morrison, told the Chronicle that "The more I learned, the less certain I became about what really happened. "It is seven years later, and I am still having to prove and prove and prove what has happened to me." 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. And she ended up responding right away, and asked to get on a phone call. Right. 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? And so I did definitely have that kind of like: I have no idea what else is going to convince these people. Or is this something thats been overlooked? And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. 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. If you speak, Im going to disconnect you from the call. So those questions really came later. I said were almost done. As youve had time to sort through this, what do you think was driving Penn to go through this process, which they had to know, at some level, would cost them? Yeah. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. Thats the reality of it, but we dont want to think of it that way. Enough blood? I think [its] called Penn First, I believe, and it seems like you socially spent a lot of time with them? 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.. Are we going to see these injuries? Yeah. And I dont remember all of the questions, but it was a really intense, rapid fire of really difficult and challenging questions. And theyll openly talk about this. [23] In mid-April, Penn released Fierceton's master's degree. [2], The next morning, when Fierceton awoke, Morrison told her she was taking her car keys and telling the school she was sick. And Im glad that people are having the kinds of systemic discussions that are so key to all of this. RG: 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? She was an independent student when she applied. 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. 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? [2], Over the middle of 2020, Fierceton became active in the Black Lives Matter protests at Penn. 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? If youre an independent student, then you should check yes to both boxes. MF: You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. RG: Right. First, Morrison had tried to send Fierceton some jewelry during her freshman year and contacted the university to find out how to get in touch with her; when Fierceton was informed of this she said she had a, "Regardless of the actual reason for her name change," Penn's lawyers write in their response to her lawsuit, "Fierceton effectively fastened a buffer of separation between her real life story and the false story she had cultivated for Penn and others. [1]:111112, In her Intercept interview, Grim recounts how this was reported in The New Yorker and asks "So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use?" 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. [2], Fierceton shared the information she had with Logan, who in turn took it to a law firm that investigated further. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? Cause then you cant think that it could be you. 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. The Chronicle reports that although she spent her final year of high school in foster care, the student had grown up in an affluent suburb of St. Louis with her mother, a radiologist, and attended private schools. His master's level university, Ivy College Pennsylvania, also failed to grant him the acquired master's degree . [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. I think [its] called Penn First, I believe, and it seems like you socially spent a lot of time with them? 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. And we have this idea of what a person looks like who commits a crime or who gets arrested for child abuse. [2], DSS kept Morrison on its child-abuser registry, as it still believed the allegations to be founded, and a petition to its Child Abuse and Neglect Review Board to have her removed was denied. Fierceton. She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. 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. MF: So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. Is that your experience with it as well? Mackenzie Fierceton (born Mackenzie Terrell on August 9, 1997; later Mackenzie Morrison,[1]:6364,86) is an American activist and graduate student currently studying at Oxford University. And so I wanted to start with where things really started to unravel for you. 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. And still, it was just like: Nope. MF: Yeah. 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. The court had ordered Fierceton and Morrison into family therapy, but the former was too afraid of the latter to do it. 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. She is a student who found herself in a complex and easily-misunderstood situation: working towards her degree without support from family. 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. I have some of my own theories, but I want to hear yours. And I also think we have this racist and classist notion of who can be an abuser or who can cause harm. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. 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. But it was in the sense of: I didnt recognize myself both because I was beaten and my face was swollen and whatever, and I felt like at rock bottom and broken. And Im Ryan Grim, D.C. bureau chief of The Intercept. Absolutely. 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. Am I right about that? Yes, it may be true that institutions like UPenn give students like Fierceton opportunities because of their story, but that does not mean her narrative is theirs for the taking. Yes, to my lawyer who communicated it to me. [2], Morrison's arrest had been reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,[6] where commenters on the online version of the story took her side, speculating that Fierceton was "an entitled brat" who had vengefully fabricated charges that had the potential to end her mother's medical career. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse.. MF: Yeah. And its no offense its not like the most profound . RG: Did they make that threat in writing or was that . She is poor, but she has not been poor for long enough. Its just so obvious that you fit the criteria for low-income, but it seems like they feel like you dont fit it in the spirit of how they want it. And you experienced that yourself, right? She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse.. And please go and leave us a rating or a review it helps people find the show. And I was actually really nervous about doing any press for this reason. And I think I just share that because I think its a powerful example of if that is as far as theyre going to go when theres literal documentation from child me and that accusing me of that being faked, I really am like: I dont know, short of a video montage of instances of abuse from 6 to 16, what would convince them. "Was the problem that a child who was placed into foster care and had no contact with her biological mother wasn't actually a first-generation college student? So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. Fierceton applied for the Rhodes Scholarship with assistance from Penn's Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. Two other women he was involved with had also reported him to law enforcement). Right. At her request Penn kept her contact information out of the school's directory on its website. 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. MF: You know, I believe the first people who said that was the Rhodes Trust. 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? Again, this is obviously secondhand, because I was unconscious. And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. 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. 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. 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. [5] Lovelace was also arrested and charged with sexual abuse. And MacKenzie is the only one whos allowed to answer these questions. "She has become emboldened over time, and has been successful with her evolving tale for 6 yrs. Theyre not on a website. 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. 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. She had not, she insisted, written her original essay with the intent of increasing her chances of admission. There were three instances of attempted contact from her family or foster family. And that is, I felt very defeated too. 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. Deconstructed[emailprotected]theintercept.com, Photo illustration: Soohee Cho for The Intercept; Getty Images, AP, This weeks guest on Deconstructed is Mackenzie Fierceton, who was the subject of, The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. But she says she occasionally received packages at her dorm room containing objects she suspected had come from her mother, such as a bracelet with an inscription about finding the truth, or others close to her, such as a pair of sneakers, which she believed Lovelace, who had sometimes helped her stretch before workouts, had sent. And after you talked to the school, how did you get to school the next morning? MF: So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. [2][4][15], After learning this, Fierceton and a fellow SP2 student began doing research. 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. A trial was held in early 2019 at which she, Fierceton, a psychologist and a DSS investigator testified. She arrives as a new student at Erinsborough High School and is connected to the . And I think its true. And then very quickly turn to very specific questions about different instances of abuse. Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. [Laughs.]. Why would I do that? [i] Ruderman corroborated that later to The New Yorker, saying she was paraphrasing Fierceton's self-identification as FGLI. Others echoed the criticism. So, yes. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. RG: 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. 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. Mhmm. 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. 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. [Laughs.]. And I kind of felt like things were resolved until the next week when there was more [laughs] more downhill event. [1] It appended both the Rhodes report and OSC's as exhibits. 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. And I think said something along the lines of there were things missing and it was distorted. The recurring sexual abuse by Lovelace had made Fierceton even more anxious over the summer after he gave her mother a gun as a gift (Morrison had called the police after Lovelace showed Fierceton pictures of the gun. [14], Fierceton and her faculty supporters have suspected that Penn's investigation of her, and its determination to cast aspersions on her credibility, may be related to her role in fomenting a wrongful death suit filed against the university in August 2020, before she had been announced as a Rhodes Scholarship winner. [2], The trust notified Fierceton at the beginning of 2021 that it was conducting an investigation into the allegations. A petition to the county circuit court to have the arrest expunged was granted in a one-page order that attributed the arrest to "false information". Trust notified Fierceton at the beginning of 2021 that it was conducting an investigation the! 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