I want to read from The New Yorker article again, it says: The Web site of Penn First Plus, a university program founded in 2018 to support F.G.L.I. I have some of my own theories, but I want to hear yours. One of them, to me, felt pretty clear that it was probably from someone in my biological family, because it had photos of me; it had very specific information that very few people would have and I dont think many people would have random childhood photos of me. 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. In a 25-minute conversation, she went into detail with Fierceton about her past and what she planned to do with her scholarship. In its response to Fierceton's lawsuit, the university says its general counsel talked with Hayes, who said that bringing the charges had been the "biggest mistake" of his career. She felt as if it might have been an attempt to intimidate her. Morrison then brought suit in circuit court to have the board's decision reviewed and reversed. 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. RG: And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . 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. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? Yes. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. What was the response from the readers of the paper? So that was, I think later on that specific line came into question. But part of it is funding decisions. Enough bruises? [23] In mid-April, Penn released Fierceton's master's degree. 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. She was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome and released after three weeks. 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. And I havent been on any of the Penn websites. It was: Shes a spoiled little brat. Its a very different lifestyle. Morrison's name was therefore ordered removed from the DSS registry. So they didnt ask about that in this meeting. 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". Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. he asked in the first. [2], Brandt noted that Morrison never asked about, or expressed concern for, her daughter's well-being. Like, it seemed like an airtight case from my perspective. RG: Yeah. [2][e], A spokesman for the D.A. Why would I do that? Penn's report notes that Fierceton disputes this account. At school, she began confiding about her situation with a history teacher, telling them about her mother's physical abuse. She expressed some concern to Penn staff that if she won, the media attention might incite her mother and her family to attack her reputation, and expressed on a form she filed with Penn as part of the process a concern of hers that FGLI students such as herself were "pressured to be someone they were not amidst their application process." RG: Is that what sent you into a surreal state? She added the additional detail that at the time of her first hospitalization, Fierceton had just failed her first AP Chemistry test. Because Im not under any illusion that Im the typical foster kid. 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. 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. Cops have accused the MTV star of stalking as well as violation of an order of protection. That is when I would trace it back to. Mhmm. And after you talked to the school, how did you get to school the next morning? She told Brandt it was her mother, and asked her to keep Morrison from coming to her room. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. RG: First of all, thats one box? If youd like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. 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? And theyll openly talk about this. So they heard from her and immediately they call you into a meeting with the deputy provost at the time, Beth Winkelstein . I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. That was my personal statement. This made Fierceton feel as if she were being watched for anything she did that could be used against the state's case by her mother. What happened the night you ended up in foster care? And thats an unfortunate reality so many survivors experience, not having a lot of documentation. She retained two lawyers to represent her pro bono; they talked to Morrison themselves, who told them she still loved her daughter and wanted her to come home. [2], During her high school years, Fierceton has alleged that her mother subjected her to emotional and physical abuse, the latter enough on more than one occasion to require hospitalization. Two other women he was involved with had also reported him to law enforcement). She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse.. And then as the different internships, and then I went to get my masters in social work and all of this happened, I started to see that continue in different capacities while I was in different roles, seeing that theme in this relationship between foster care and the criminal justice system. "[2], That feeling was not mutual, Fierceton came to suspect. If you speak, Im going to disconnect you from the call. And you experienced that yourself, right? 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 so I was like, of course, Im going to respond again. "I really don't have words,'" she told a mentor at the Penn Women's Center. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. 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. 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. who was, I believe now, the acting provost. 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. "[2], When Fierceton returned to the St. Louis area on vacations and breaks, she stayed with friends. Because processes become Kafkaesque very quickly. Were close to done. Mackenzie Fierceton has lost her Rhodes Scholarship and her University of Pennsylvania master's degree is being held after an anonymous tipster called out alleged inaccuracies in her school. And like you said, like, yes, obviously I was looking in a mirror, and I knew I was looking in a mirror. And we have this idea of what a person looks like who commits a crime or who gets arrested for child abuse. Theres people who span all different kinds of experiences. No, I cant. The program's application asked "Are you the first generation in your family to attend college? Its hard to say. [Laughs.] And the theme of private school definitely came up many times over the course of the last year and a half. In other words, if you are parent who says that you are wishing your daughter well and youre telling the authorities that shes just mentally ill and its just a really, really sad and tragic case that shes making up all of these allegations of abuse and throwing herself down stairs, and beating herself up all for cries for help, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera you wouldnt then also pursue a multi-year long effort to destroy her life. [1]:95, Judge Kristine Allen Kerr ultimately held for Morrison. . And we spoke for a long time and I went through everything I had found. RG: So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? "Fuck thatI don't have [a family]" she said later. [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. 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. I tried to help as much as I could. Cause I had assumed it was her. RG: in America. 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, Mackenzie, you and I were just talking offline. 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". Picture: University of Pennsylvania/Instagram. 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. in America. So to me it was pretty clear that it likely came from them. "[2], In December, an anonymous 22-page letter was sent to the U.S. office of the Rhodes Trust, which administers the scholarship program. Mackenzie Fierceton of St. Louis was an Oxford student who had to offer her a Rhodes scholarship after the university caught her lying about her financial condition and her unpleasant teenage years on her application reports. Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. "[2], Near the end of November Fierceton was named one of 32 Rhodes scholars from the U.S. for the year. So that was what the actual poem and personal statement was about [laughs.] Its, in my opinion, because they get overlooked and the kids like me are kind of rendered invisible by the privileges of our biological families. 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. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. And they were the ones I believe and this is public now because Penn attached it to their response to the lawsuit I filed and I believe they were the first ones to mention that I had gone to private school and that they were questioning if I was low-income. Mackenzie Fierceton has lost her Rhodes scholarship and her University of Pennsylvania master's degree is being held after an anonymous tipster called out alleged inaccuracies in her school and scholarship applications. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at [emailprotected] Thanks so much! MF: Yeah. 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? I really appreciate it. 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. Ultimately, she lost her Rhodes Scholarship, and Penn withheld her masters degree, demanding a letter of apology. Cause then you cant think that it could be you. [2][g], The packages she says she received were supplemented by hangup calls, which a faculty member Fierceton occasionally lived with recalled her receiving in the months preceding the trial of her mother's lawsuit against DSS later in her junior year. MF: At first there was actually, there was contention. 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. But it was just kind of this rapid fire of: If we look at your medical records, are we going to see you had broken ribs and severe facial injuries? Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. And so youre becoming rather inconvenient to the university at that point , I would assume, which plays into the way that universities and elite structures think of diversity, I think. 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. I had never heard of FGLI, but these labels resonated with a story I was still trying to process. And we entered the meeting and it immediately felt really hostile to me. So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? [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. So that was, I think later on that specific line came into question. I think this is a conversation not necessarily for people who are still in question about what happened here. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? First of all, thats one box? [2], The trust notified Fierceton at the beginning of 2021 that it was conducting an investigation into the allegations. Right. Did she lie? And so the fact that shes continued pursuing you to me kind of demonstrates the entire case. [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. And so I wanted to start with where things really started to unravel for you. 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. [3], Before that happened, Fierceton withdrew from the scholarship on her own. [2] Winkelstein, who has a Ph.D. in bioengineering and has studied injuries,[3] then proceeded to interrogate Fierceton at length about her abuse and hospitalization, in a manner that led Fierceton to believe that not only did Winkelstein doubt her story but had spoken with Morrison. 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. While her yes answer to "At any time since you turned age 13, were both your parents deceased, were you in foster care or were you a dependent or ward of the court?" Its virtually almost an unknown phenomena or to people who are working in the field, its certainly known, but theres been very little research on it, which partially complicates my Ph.D., because theres so little to draw upon. [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. There were so many there are, I guess I should say so many moving pieces. Professor Walter Licht, a Penn historian who runs the program, recalls her as the sort of student who would "[ask] a question that makes everyone stop and brings the conversation to a different pitch." 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. By the end of the year she was in a third foster home. 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. 2020 College graduate Mackenzie Fierceton (Photo from Mackenzie Fierceton). Seeing other students consult their parents for minor decisions made her feel left out; she avoided telling people she had been in foster care before college. [2], Fierceton supplied the trust's investigators with her medical and court records from the mid-2010s as well as letters from 26 peopleteachers at Whitfield, the three Penn faculty members who had written her Rhodes recommendation letters, vouching for her abuse claims and saying she had never misrepresented herself. Mackenzie is currently suing the university. Fierceton clarified her identity during the interview:[4]. Fierceton. 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. RG: And The New Yorker article also alluded to a few things that you had gotten loose with in a couple of paragraphs. And thats actually one of the things that, if there was any doubt whatsoever about this story, in some ways it was settled by that. The department of social services substantiated Mackenzies allegations, as did the Missouri Child Abuse and Neglect Review Board, which is an independent state panel. And still, it was just like: Nope. Brandt, the Chesterfield police detective who had originally investigated the case, said later that the prosecutor never explained to her what that new evidence was. And she ended up responding right away, and asked to get on a phone call. Gathering outside Caster, whose renovation they also demanded, they marched toward College Hall, where Winkelstein had taken over as interim provost following Gutmann's departure, and chanted for her ouster as well. RG: Right. 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