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. And I kind of felt like things were resolved until the next week when there was more [laughs] more downhill event. Its a very under-researched field. And we cant acknowledge that, so we then have to pick apart the other pieces of it, and say that well this, this just cant be real. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. Enough bruises? 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. Fierceton had apparently made much of her status as a 'first generation, low income' student, an abuse survivor who aged out of foster care. 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. 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. [2], The next morning, when Fierceton awoke, Morrison told her she was taking her car keys and telling the school she was sick. Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. It quotes her as saying "If you find me dead, it was my mom. [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. While Kerr noted that Fierceton's three weeks in the hospital was far longer than might be expected given the bruises that led to her admission, she also noted the absence of injuries to Fierceton's back despite having reportedly fallen or being thrown downstairs. A picture of her was posted at the nurse's station should she make the attempt. Like some students do have a story, more like me where they had some kind of separation from their family; other students their parents were doctors or lawyers or Ph.D. students in other countries, but then they came here and their degrees no longer, essentially, counted or people who are just first-generation and not necessarily low-income or people who are low-income, but not first-generation. 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. But teachers noticed that Fierceton often seemed physically uncomfortable in her mother's presence, and a close friend noted that she was often injured. "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. Or is this something thats been overlooked? RG: Right. We want to think of it as: If you were ever rich, youre always rich; if youre ever poor, youre always poor. As an anonymous letter writer revealed, however, she was also the privately educated child of a radiologist, brought up in an affluent suburb. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of lying. I think this is a conversation not necessarily for people who are still in question about what happened here. Fierceton said that when she had applied to SP2 as a sophomore she had cleared it with the school's associate director of admissions, who told her that a student's biological parents were not relevant to that definition, and said the same thing in 2020 (Penn's OSC interviewed the associate director and SP2's associate director for financial aid whom Fierceton said she had a similar conversation with; neither remembered speaking with Fierceton about the issue)[1]:111112). I think [its] called Penn First, I believe, and it seems like you socially spent a lot of time with them? Ultimately, she lost her Rhodes Scholarship, and Penn withheld her masters degree, demanding a letter of apology. So they didnt ask about that in this meeting. 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. She entered foster care only at the age of 17, after making a complaint of abuse against Dr.. [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. 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. MF: You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. But when you're filling out a box where it's "yes" or "no" and there's no more information or "kind of!" 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 I ended up reading the comments, and the comments were just horrendous. When they did, they were unable to get stretchers or backboards down Caster's stairways or elevators as there was insufficient space. [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. Right. And it has, has she stuck by that? Which as Im sure youve learned since is a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of poverty . MF: Yeah. I have some of my own theories, but I want to hear yours. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. Mackenzie Fierceton was deposed after seeking justice for a mature student, Cameron Driver, 38. When asked what she might have done differently, Fierceton told the Chronicle that while she had at some points wished she had never applied to Penn, and later considered rephrasing some of the things she wrote on her essays and applications, "[w]here I've landed is that I have a right to write about my experiences as I experienced them. We want to think of it as: If you were ever rich, youre always rich; if youre ever poor, youre always poor. [Laughs.]. Enough blood? And you experienced that yourself, right? I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. It was literally just like: She was arrested and her daughter is hospitalized. Are we going to see these injuries? And youre getting instruction from a university official that thats how youre supposed to fill it out, thats what the definition says online. Fierceton's mother's supporters have maintained that her daughter was an emotionally manipulative girl who injured herself and fabricated other aspects of the abuse in order to become a more appealing candidate for admission to an Ivy League college such as the University of Pennsylvania. The reality star has struggled with drug addiction for years. Her mentor told Licht afterwards that "it felt like an attack on a student" and that she had never experienced anything like it. "[2], Fierceton was one of 15 freshmen made Civic Scholars, a program focused on social justice and community service, with an emphasis on confronting the intersections of identity and privilege. And we do know for sure that she was in touch with the university. I think they do have a richer experience if they have more diversity around them, but that is more the point. And they released this quote-unquote report in April of 2021 with their findings. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. 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. RG: Penn officials, of course, have said the interview was appropriate. MF: Yeah. 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? And it felt very similar that, well, this cant be real. She felt as if it might have been an attempt to intimidate her. And it felt very similar that, well, this cant be real. Yes, definitely. Mackenzie Morrison was born Mackenzie Terrell but took her mother's name after her father, Billy Terrell, who worked in soap operas, left. 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. But its interesting because most of the questions are about these applications and then the second half is when it turns to these questions of the abuse. 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? You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. MF: I think youre right. [22] It went into greater detail about her past, providing more substantiation for her abuse allegations from teachers, fellow students and their parents, Carrie Brandt (the police detective who had investigated and arrested Morrison) and her allegations that Morrison had enabled Lovelace's sexual abuse. Penn's Office of Student Conduct recommended withholding her master's degree until she paid a fine; both conditions were dropped but a notation about the investigative finding remains in her transcript. The show was mixed by William Stanton. 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. 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. And I didnt really know any information, except for that he had had a medical emergency in class and then been pronounced dead at the hospital. That they would forward charges to the federal government of wire fraud. [2], Local police were called. [2][5] It did not disclose that it had done so until March. "She lies better than I can tell the truth. 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. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. 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. [2], Fierceton was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania (commonly known as Penn) on a full scholarship, arranged through QuestBridge. Her last set of foster parents had had a baby and she felt less a part of their lives. 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. [3] The change in her living situation greatly complicated her college plans as she had no financial resources of her own. Although she had not attended an orientation session for first-generation/low-income (FGLI) students she had been invited to, on campus she began attending meetings and gatherings of Penn First, an FGLI student group founded the preceding year to pressure Penn to better accommodate their needs, such as not closing dormitories and cafeterias over breaks since many FGLI students could not, for various reasons, return home during those periods. [2] Morrison's bond was originally set at $40,000, but lowered to $5,000 over prosecutors' strenuous objections. And then she hired a law firm and eventually they were doing their own investigation for several months. Its practically half of Americans, or more. 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. In addition it offered details of what its own investigation had concluded about Fierceton's childhood and adolescence that led OSC to believe it was likely that she had exaggerated or fabricated outright her claims about her mother. "Without her trauma, she didnt matter", wrote a commentator in the Tulane Hullabaloo. Penn filed a 130-page response two weeks later, denying all her allegations of wrongdoing and saying that the university officials and co-defendants who had investigated the case were unaware of the Driver lawsuit when they did. Or whatever our kind of contemporary version of it is. 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 that dynamic, I would say, [laughs] probably played a big part in all of this. RG: Talk just a little bit about that case . The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. RG: 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. So that was, I think later on that specific line came into question. 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. 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