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. And then she hired a law firm and eventually they were doing their own investigation for several months. Mackenzie went to a private prep school, Whitfield, in St. Louis and was an active student. Beth Winkelstein, at the time Penn's deputy provost, signed off on her application for the school, writing that "Mackenzie understands what it is like to be an at-risk youth, and she is determined to re-make the systems that block rather than facilitate success. She was one of only 32 high school students selected from a pool of 2300 applicants. 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. 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. They had done their own investigation again, quotes on investigation and then I had submitted over a hundred pages of documents to them. Her mother was a doctor and Fierceton attended a prep school, but she was. [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. Ultimately, she lost her Rhodes Scholarship, and Penn withheld her masters degree, demanding a letter of apology. Mhmm. She felt as if it might have been an attempt to intimidate her. Yeah. But it was definitely something I saw happening sort of this funneling of kids from the child welfare to criminal justice system. In the transcript, I wrote it was really just focused on: What happened the night you went into foster care? But I guess I cant say for sure. Her junior year at Whitfield, a prestigious prep school, Mackenzie showed up to school one day in a terrible state. And you experienced that yourself, right? Our producer is Zach Young. [2], For her senior year, Whitfield gave Fierceton a full scholarship. She found Fierceton's diary at the house and read it, then interviewed teachers and administrators at Whitfield, learning of Morrison's insulting texts to Fierceton. That would have to be the rationale that they would have for those childhood journals to be faked. She is a student who found herself in a complex and easily-misunderstood situation: working towards her degree without support from family. 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. And then it just launched into the first half being a line-by-line it felt like interrogation of my applications. Two weeks into the school year, she realized she had been wrong. [3] In high school there, Fierceton was a model student. 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. 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! Have you ever heard of her case? It didnt have any facts of the case. And I havent been on any of the Penn websites. She has a bachelor's degree in political science from Penn and was working on a master's in social work. And do you know Linda Tirado? According to Fierceton, her mother pushed her down the stairs and then beat her extensively at the bottom. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. 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. You know, I believe the first people who said that was the Rhodes Trust. The reality star has struggled with drug addiction for years. Or was the real issue that Fierceton did not really fit the profile of a suffering student who needed the benevolence of an Ivy League school?" Ryan Grim: This weeks guest on Deconstructed is Mackenzie Fierceton, who was the subject of a recent story in The New Yorker. 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. [4] It took nearly an hour, during which Fierceton seized intermittently and never completely regained consciousness, for her to be taken to the hospital. MF: So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. 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 how much did she challenge your medical condition after that beating? 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. When I came to Penn and saw all of these students who were living that life, there was a sense of community and solidarity amongst us, which was very powerful for me because I just felt so out of place. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. Teen Mom alum Mackenzie Edwards' husband Ryan Edwards is to be arrested soon. If you speak, Im going to disconnect you from the call. Uh, my lawyer. Fierceton was mentioned in the complaint as having experienced similar issues following her seizure; she was deposed in the suit in March 2021, the month before the university's investigation led her to withdraw from the Rhodes Scholarship. For all the readers could have known, there could have been a videotape of it happening. Theres people who span all different kinds of experiences. And then there was this other foster sibling who was the biological kid of the foster parents I was staying with, and spelling it out in that way. Fierceton clarified the details in question and Ruderman said she understood better. Fierceton's life story, as well as her self-identification as a "first generation" college student, came under scrutiny by the university when an anonymous email alleged that Fierceton was not. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. It was more, I think, in the times after and the months after where I ended up like giving different medical records and all of these things to corroborate my account, but there were a few questions that were very specific to what had happened. And The New Yorker article also alluded to a few things that you had gotten loose with in a couple of paragraphs. And so if its a well-educated white girl from a private school, thats way too close to home for a lot of these elites. Her last set of foster parents had had a baby and she felt less a part of their lives. What about Rhodes? Fierceton had apparently made much of her status as a 'first generation, low income' student, an abuse survivor who aged out of foster care. [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. I didnt really know what it was going to be, but I feel like its always good to have someone with you. So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. But it doesnt mean you were always low-income, just that you are now. 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. 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 program's application asked "Are you the first generation in your family to attend college? 207 1,590 6,062 Show this thread Mackenzie Fierceton @MFierceton Aug 8 Will never not make my day to see this on the shelf. [2] Morrison's bond was originally set at $40,000, but lowered to $5,000 over prosecutors' strenuous objections. "[2], On her application, Fierceton recounted her background and the unexpected way it led to her becoming a foster child. I tried to help as much as I could. RG: Right. The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. While the investigators understood, they also wrote that the limited information she provided may have been more likely to elicit an answer favorable to her. The prosecutor eventually dropped the charges and the arrest record was expunged. ")[3], The OSC report also concluded that nothing in her academic record warranted the revocation of either degree. And back in high school, it was a similar thing. RG: I want to talk about where you think that pushback came from. 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. MF: Yeah. 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. [1]:86, Morrison prospered in her medical career, and she provided generously for her daughter, allowing her to ride horses, go on river rafting trips and attend exclusive private schools, such as Whitfield, in nearby Creve Coeur, where annual tuition was almost $30,000. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? 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. [2], Classmates who told Fierceton this also noted the similarities to another medical emergency in September 2018, when a 38-year-old SP2 graduate named Cameron Driver had suffered a cardiac event during a class in Caster's basement. The mother hired a high-powered attorney and engaged in a local campaign to discredit Mackenzie. Or is this something thats been overlooked? 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! And still, it was just like: Nope. So the students had to form a human chain from the first floor down to the basement where all our classes are to relay instructions from the paramedics, the Philadelphia paramedics, to the professor who was, to my understanding, performing CPR. 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. RG: That they would forward charges to the federal government of wire fraud. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse., No, I found it before. 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 that was the end of it, right? What happened the night you ended up in foster care? 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. There was also the part of me that was terrified. 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. Asked about Lovelace's alleged sexual abuse, specifically an incident the year before where Fierceton, having fallen asleep in her mother's bed, woke to find him caressing her breasts, Morrison expressed amusement at the possibility that her boyfriend could have mistaken her teenage daughter for her; Lovelace, interviewed separately, denied all the allegations. Is that your experience with it as well? 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. . And youre getting instruction from a university official that thats how youre supposed to fill it out, thats what the definition says online. She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. I think youre right. The court had ordered Fierceton and Morrison into family therapy, but the former was too afraid of the latter to do it. They took photographs of Caster's staircases and elevators, and interviewed witnesses and some of the Penn paramedics who had responded. Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb. And even now, The New Yorker quotes a lot from my childhood journals describing my abuse. And we have this idea of what a person looks like who commits a crime or who gets arrested for child abuse. And my biological family did not fit those stereotypes, and I think that was really hard for people to process. What was the response from the readers of the paper? That evening that the article came out is when I got a call from the reporter saying: I got this anonymous email that said X, Y, Z, and I wanted to let you know. Then the Philly paramedics couldnt figure out how to get to the building and then they couldnt get me out. MF: Yeah. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. [19] The New York Post wrote that "[t]he case exposes the murky underbelly of elite schools like Penn. on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadnt done it? She had lived with her mother since her parents divorced acrimoniously during her childhood, and a guardian ad litem was appointed to represent Fierceton's interests in the proceeding, during which abuse allegations were made. And so I wanted to start with where things really started to unravel for you. Within days of the article being published, the universitys general counsel was in touch with Mackenzies mother. It recommended that Fierceton's master's be withheld until she paid a $4,000 fine and that her academic transcript carry a notation that she was sanctioned for her "objective inaccuracy" in answering the first-generation question on her application. And I suspected that it was about this anonymous email. Yeah. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? [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. 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. How much research has been done on the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline? A graduate student named Mackenzie Fierceton was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 only to have it stripped from her a few months later after allegations. [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. RG: First of all, thats one box? Her mothers name was entered into a registry of abusers. Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. Right. RG: Who will spend some significant amount of time in poverty. RG: Right. 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. 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 I think its true. Is that your experience with it as well? 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. And is it somewhat of a defense mechanism that people deploy to protect themselves? And its funny, cause it just made me so frustrated and I actually went back and read it. She had seen no signs of abuse in the relationship and considered Fierceton to be the dominant personality in it. RG: Or whatever our kind of contemporary version of it is. A University of Pennsylvania May graduate who is currently completing her master's degree at Penn has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at the University of Oxford.. Penn's 2021 Rhodes Scholar is Mackenzie Fierceton from St. Louis, currently residing in Philadelphia. Interesting. 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. [2], Brandt noted that Morrison never asked about, or expressed concern for, her daughter's well-being. And it felt very similar that, well, this cant be real. [2], The next morning, when Fierceton awoke, Morrison told her she was taking her car keys and telling the school she was sick. Anything in particular jump out at you after having read back over that transcript? 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