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? RG: And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. That would have to be the rationale that they would have for those childhood journals to be faked. In 2020, former foster child Mackenzie Fierceton received a Rhodes Scholarship as a self-identified first generation, low income student at the University of Pennsylvania. And then very quickly turn to very specific questions about different instances of abuse. I think its a reflection of the systemic prejudices . MF: So thats the background of him. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? Or is that it separates two into one? And the chain of events that happened leading into foster care? Fine. so that people have the background there. 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. 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. "Without her trauma, she didnt matter", wrote a commentator in the Tulane Hullabaloo. Did you go into foster care? Mackenzie, for her part, was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania and, in her sophomore year, won a Rhodes Scholarship. "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? MF: Yes, definitely. Fierceton responded that that showed the university's "vulnerability and desperation". Penn again spoke with Morrison and, this time as well, the St. Louis County prosecutor who had decided to drop the charges, without informing Fierceton, which the university defended as standard practice not to identify witnesses interviewed. And where are you at school? Mackenzie Fierceton, 23, originally from St. Louis, Missouri, possesses a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and planned to utilize the scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in social . Its practically half of Americans, or more. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. 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. She considered the advantages and disadvantages of reporting her mother, but ultimately feared she might not even be believed, as her mother would tell people she was mentally ill or lying. "[b] She considered running away but had a distant relationship with her father, and nowhere else she believed she could go. Did she lie? And after you talked to the school, how did you get to school the next morning? [2] Katie Couric had Fierceton as a guest on her podcast a week later. Nor is she obligated to meet their expectations of her. But I agreed to come into this Zoom meeting and this was the last day of November 2020. @RachelAviv for @NewYorker You didnt grow up in crumbling projects your entire life. Because that was one of the ones that really blew my mind. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. Morrison then brought suit in circuit court to have the board's decision reviewed and reversed. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. But that was definitely a driving force for why I decided, ultimately, to withdraw because I felt like: OK, federal prison is no joke. And how much did she challenge your medical condition after that beating? Because processes become Kafkaesque very quickly. 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? 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. A cousin who lived with the Morrisons for a while did not see any signs of abuse and believed it was possible Fierceton could have inflicted the injuries herself. So it makes some sense that they were very similar questions. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. 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. 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. 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. Thats not in question. RG: 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. We want to think of it as: If you were ever rich, youre always rich; if youre ever poor, youre always poor. The wellness director told her she would have to notify the state's Department of Social Services (DSS) of the incident. Cause I had assumed it was her. And it was also the community was kind of divided. 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." MF: Yeah. [1]:115 As to her previous involvement with the child welfare system, Penn says Fierceton told them she was not certain, but she was referring either to the guardian ad litem appointed for her during her parents' divorce or an earlier incident when she and her biological parents were still living in Connecticut. By those standards, the standards of real family, not one person I'm related to by blood meets those requirements or even comes close." 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. 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. 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? 's office explained the decision to drop the charges against Morrison as based on new evidence that had emerged. "[2], Near the end of November Fierceton was named one of 32 Rhodes scholars from the U.S. for the year. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse.. MF: Just a quick circling back, Im actually not sure if it was her who first reached out or if it was General Counsel Wendy White, because I later found out that they had a phone call about 36 hours after the article came out and seemed to talk pretty extensively, and then there were a lot of emails that happened. And she had gone to a private school growing up. I was like: Great. It's from there the story unraveled. If you speak, Im going to disconnect you from the call. Enough blood? RG: Penn officials, of course, have said the interview was appropriate. And still, it was just like: Nope. And she ended up responding right away, and asked to get on a phone call. 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? [1]:111112, Penn's investigators asked Fierceton why she had pretended to be asking on another's behalf when she made her queries within the university. And youre getting instruction from a university official that thats how youre supposed to fill it out, thats what the definition says online. The award brings the number of Penn Rhodes Scholars to 31 since the scholarship's inception in 1902. She bounced from one foster home to the next. 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. "[12] Gutmann, soon to step down from her position to serve as U.S. ambassador to Germany, had made increasing the amount of FGLI students at Penn a priority in her previous 17 years as the university's president. [2], At the beginning of the next school year, Fierceton was examined by her pediatrician, who noticed a large bruise on her arm but chose not to X-ray it, a decision the doctor later regretted. Like, it seemed like an airtight case from my perspective. 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. RG: And so youre becoming rather inconvenient to the university at that point , RG: I would assume, which plays into the way that universities and elite structures think of diversity, I think. Cause Ive just wanted to go on with my life and, you know, live it. And you saw that playing out right away, right, when your biological mother was first arrested? Joining is simple and doesnt need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. Within days of the article being published, the universitys general counsel was in touch with Mackenzies mother. It was: Shes a spoiled little brat. [2], The next morning, when Fierceton awoke, Morrison told her she was taking her car keys and telling the school she was sick. Picture: University of Pennsylvania/Instagram. Like, it seemed like an airtight case from my perspective. Our producer is Zach Young. And Penn is still claiming that those are fake journals. And again, people, including Penn administrators, have the perception of I think the stereotype and my friend Anea Moore, whos a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Penn who founded Penn first or co-founded it had a really great quote in The New Yorker about we arent all, quote-unquote something along the lines of like impoverished, inner city kids who go to crumbling public schools as the wider media portrays us to be. And many more vicious sentiments. 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. Thank you so much for having me. Penn's report notes that Fierceton disputes this account. [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. But its relevant to financial aid and the student should check whatever box is going to give them most access to financial aid, which would be yes to both questions. Fierceton wrote to SP2 dean Sara Bachman complaining about the interview, saying she felt "worthlessness, hopelessness, and shame" for a week afterwards. [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. "We would never have believed any of it if we weren't living it." I think youre right. Mackenzie Fierceton, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, has won the prestigious and extremely competitive Rhodes Scholarship, which will allow her to study at Oxford in November 2020. RG: Like, those two things dont fit together. Why would I do that? 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. I was a teenager and I was in the hospital and I didnt have any perspective. Right. RG: So one of the questions that you mentioned that they asked was about your essay , RG: 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. Mackenzie Fierceton was named Penn's 2021 Rhodes Scholar. RG: in America. 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. Theyre not on a website. RG: And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? But I think a lot of it stems from the current policies and practices of federal and local funding and what kind of programs theyre funding for kids. "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. Ultimately, she lost her Rhodes Scholarship, and Penn withheld her masters degree, demanding a letter of apology. 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. The New Yorker reported that Fierceton reported this to Penn's campus police, fearing that her mother had somehow found out where she was living. In her reading, Tracy came across an article that congratulated Mackenzie Fierceton, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, on being named a Rhodes Scholar. Later in the year she wrote online that the name change gave her "ownership of her identity" and a sense of agency she had not had before in her life. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. She also alleged that Penn had on many occasions failed to follow its own disciplinary policies in its investigation of her.[16]. 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. And theyll openly talk about this. And theyll openly talk about this. [c] Chewing was difficult as well, and she had a feeding tube inserted. 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. 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