MF: She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. And what area of it are you going to explore with your Ph.D.? Her sister also wrote White as well, alleging that Fierceton "deliberately tried to frame Carrie and planted 'evidence' around the house, including her own blood. 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. 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". That is when I would trace it back to. RG: Mhmm. Photograph by Robbie Lawrence for The New Yorker Mackenzie Fierceton grew up in a middle-class suburb of St. Louis. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. Fierceton was living off-campus by then, but she and her roommates decided to leave their apartment. 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. She chose Fierceton from a list of names she had come up with herself that projected strength, and a petition to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia was accepted. Mackenzie, for her part, was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania and, in her sophomore year, won a Rhodes Scholarship. "We would never have believed any of it if we weren't living it." And like: Why are you considered an independent student? @RachelAviv for @NewYorker As a result she withdrew from the Rhodes Scholarship; a sympathetic Penn faculty member has paid her Oxford tuition in its stead.[2]. The court granted Morrison a protection order against her former husband; Fierceton had no relationship with him from that time onward. On Saturday afternoon, Fierceton said she found herself in a Zoom meeting for several hours with 10 other finalists from this region. She began to realize that she had no sense of identity. 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. If youre an independent student, then you should check yes to both boxes. I n November 2020, University of Pennsylvania graduate student Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, won the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. RG: Anything in particular jump out at you after having read back over that transcript? "[2], On her application, Fierceton recounted her background and the unexpected way it led to her becoming a foster child. And it became pretty clear to me that there had been a very similar delay in his care, but even worse dynamics. Right. Given the pandemic, Rhodes Scholar judges interviewed candidates over Zoom. 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. So first-generation and/or low-income, again, is the acronym. 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. RG: so that people have the background there. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. Uh, my lawyer. I think its a reflection of the systemic prejudices . RG: And it has, has she stuck by that? I think there were almost 30 of those letters again, very similar to who had given statements in the past to corroborate my abuse as well as leaders in the FGLI community saying yes, we started this community. MF: Yeah. But it doesnt mean you were always low-income, just that you are now. Who will spend some significant amount of time in poverty. Thats why Im pausing to let her catch her breath. So I could imagine why at some point youd be like, you know what, Im just not going to keep taking Ls here. I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. 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. [2], Wendy Ruderman, a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, called Fierceton to interview her for a story about the scholarship. 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. 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. Again, this is obviously secondhand, because I was unconscious. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. 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. I had no idea what she already knew. MF: Yes, definitely. Were close to done. And so, just the immediate reaction was like: Theres no way. And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. In the transcript, I wrote it was really just focused on: What happened the night you went into foster care? She was hospitalized twice in 2014 due to injuries she says were inflicted by her mother; after the second stay, which lasted three weeks, the state removed her from the house and placed her in foster care. Laura Flynn is our supervising producer. 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], Some of those Morrison talked with did believe her; a classmate of Fierceton's recalled people likening her to the protagonist of the film Gone Girl, about a Missouri woman who disappears in order to avenge herself on an adulterous husband, whom she makes it appear killed her. Fierceton wrote to SP2 dean Sara Bachman complaining about the interview, saying she felt "worthlessness, hopelessness, and shame" for a week afterwards. [2], "Family is not the people you are related to by blood," she wrote in the diary. But I guess I cant say for sure. 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. 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. [2], For her senior year, Whitfield gave Fierceton a full scholarship. Anything in particular jump out at you after having read back over that transcript? Thats not in question. Because thats not how we understand poverty. [2], Shortly after the Rhodes investigation began, Rafaelle was informed that Penn was proposing to revoke Fierceton's bachelors on the grounds of her apparent self-misrepresentation. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. RG: She, about 10 years ago, she wrote a comment I think on a Gawker post or something like that that we ended up then re-publishing as an essay at The Huffington Post about, and it was about her life in poverty, and it went viral, millions of people read it, extremely well-written piece. And its no offense its not like the most profound . This definition resembles the one used in the federal Higher Education Act, which says that first-generation status depends on the education level of a parent whom a student regularly resided with and received support from.. Her account was not completely inaccurateshe described as a foster child one sibling of hers who was actually the biological child of her foster parents, for instance, which she attributed later to not having developed her essay at length. That is when I would trace it back to. So one question was: Are you from a low-income family? Its account focused on the Rhodes controversy, discussing her and Driver's suits near the end, and recalling some other recent instances of academic dishonesty, including one 2009 Harvard student whose largely fabricated high school records were only discovered when he had applied for a Rhodes Scholarship. So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. She was . Its a very under-researched field. They had done their own investigation again, quotes on investigation and then I had submitted over a hundred pages of documents to them. And back in high school, it was a similar thing. A week later, Brandt interviewed Morrison again at the police station; this time she said that her daughter had injured herself, saying "I guess she has more problems than I thought." 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 that dynamic, I would say, [laughs] probably played a big part in all of this. 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. And it just felt pretty devastating to me, because for so long I hid everything, Id been so ashamed, and I already felt so much guilt in coming forward then. Mackenzie Fierceton didn't come until much later, but with good reason. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. Since we began the Reshuffled journey, any mention of foster care grabs my attention, the same with Tracy. 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. "We have concluded that there is a basis for serious concern and that further investigation by the Rhodes Committee may be appropriate", she wrote. [2], Over the middle of 2020, Fierceton became active in the Black Lives Matter protests at Penn. 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. 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. Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, claimed she was from a poor background and grew up in foster care when she actually attended private school By Phoebe Southworth 13 January 2022 8:00pm Mackenzie. Am I right about that? [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. But afterwards she was anxious enough about how her mother might react to remain on the other side of the kitchen counter island from Morrison while they talked in the kitchen, "bracing for impact", she wrote in her diary. And we do know for sure that she was in touch with the university. [2][3], Fierceton had initially expected it would be easier for her to transition to college life than it was for other students, since she was not leaving a family behind at home. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. This could happen to me. 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. 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. 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