MF: No, I found it before. She told them she felt that would be more likely to get an unbiased answer that way. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Mackenzie Fierceton claimed that Penn officials targeted the grad student for retaliation after she became a key witness in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the university. And at the time I was like: Why what? That was my personal statement. And what happened after that? But it did open with these literary elements of what I was feeling like, and the experience I was having in those moments. And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to also check out Intercepted as well as Murderville, which is now in its second season. 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.. 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. 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. And thats again, like not because there isnt abuse or neglect going on in families that looked like mine, or biological families that looked like mine. This could happen to me. 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. RG: Interesting. [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. RG: First of all, thats one box? Like, I dont have the precise statistics in front of me, but if you asked people to guess at the number of people who will experience, say, two years of poverty in their life, people will miss it by magnitudes. Like, they want to curate a diverse experience for their well-off students, so that they can say that they had this diverse experience in college . 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. Michael Hayes, who had prosecuted Morrison, told the Chronicle that "The more I learned, the less certain I became about what really happened. And if you read it aloud, its almost exactly the length of the phone call. And Penn is still claiming that those are fake journals. And whats the difference between the U.S. and English system? There were definitely, Im sure. 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. Because processes become Kafkaesque very quickly. And what area of it are you going to explore with your Ph.D.? And after you talked to the school, how did you get to school the next morning? [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. [22], In the New Yorker article, Fierceton and others criticized Penn for its use of not only her story but another recent FGLI Rhodes awardee as poverty porn, suggesting the university had turned on her when it learned she had actually come from a privileged, affluent background and thus did not fit the narrative of having grown up in foster care recounted in its news release and the accompanying Inquirer article. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of lying. I reached out for a response to the University of Pennsylvania and also Provost Beth Winkelstein and General Counsel Wendy White for a response, as well as to Mackenzies biological mother. [5] She posted it before Fierceton's release from the hospital, and once free began calling Fierceton's friends and former teachers, telling them that Fierceton was having issues and had made it appear Morrison had beaten her. And it was also the community was kind of divided. Like, those two things dont fit together. Fierceton is the 31st Penn student to be chosen as a Rhodes Scholar since the distinguished program's start in 1902. And if those things are true, and youre also struggling in poverty, then something is deeply wrong with the system. 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. 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. RG: And what was the first-generation community like on campus? She was . And so where is your story now? Penn shut down in-person classes and gave students living on campus a week to find somewhere else to live until it was safe to return. And I didnt get an answer. And its no offense its not like the most profound . [2], Fierceton moved into the first of several foster homes, with one other foster sibling and two biological children of the foster parents. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. She thought that he had been very quickly removed from the building. I have all these three kinds of different rationale and corroborations. Is that your experience with it as well? 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. RG: Right. It called attention to claims, such as the one in her application essay, that by the time she was six she "knew every police officer in my county by their first name", a claim Fierceton herself admitted was untrue and born of her fear of her biological family when she wrote it. 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. [Laughs.]. But while OSC allowed that it may not have been Fierceton's explicit intent to deceive, she had still done so, particularly when checking "yes" on the question on her SP2 application as to whether she was the first in her family to attend college (Fierceton stands by her reliance on Penn's definitions of FGLI on the Penn Plus website and the applicable federal laws; the university says that question is "composed of ordinary words with everyday meanings, and it makes no reference to any term or definition appearing in any other publication. [2] Afterwards Morrison changed her daughter's last name to her own. How do I do that in a succinct way when theres a very short word count and youre trying to fit everyones experience in?And so I didnt really think about: Oh, I need to say: This foster sibling who was in the foster care system. I had no idea what she already knew. 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. One home, during her junior year of high school, was so "toxic" and crammed with other foster kids that she left for weeks at a time, sleeping each night on a carousel of couches at the homes of various friends, she said. And thats an unfortunate reality so many survivors experience, not having a lot of documentation. 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. I tried to help as much as I could. [i] Ruderman corroborated that later to The New Yorker, saying she was paraphrasing Fierceton's self-identification as FGLI. And its mentioned briefly. RG: Like, those two things dont fit together. Yes. 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. But those definitions arent anywhere to be found. [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. In May 2022, after a lengthy article in The New Yorker drew widespread media attention to Fierceton's story, the university dropped the charge and awarded her the degree. 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 please go and leave us a rating or a review it helps people find the show. 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." 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". In between those placements, she slept at friends' houses for long periods. And then theres the part that felt like: I have no idea whats going to convince these people if I gave them medical records, I gave them forensic photos of me taken in the hospital, I gave them again like corroboration from professors of like how I described myself, from leaders in the FIGLY community. That is when I would trace it back to. And it became pretty clear to me that there had been a very similar delay in his care, but even worse dynamics. But that was definitely a driving force for why I decided, ultimately, to withdraw because I felt like: OK, federal prison is no joke. He was earlier arrested in Chattanooga, Tennessee. [2], One day in September 2014, she told the history teacher about Lovelace's abuse. We dont believe you. RG: Mhmm. I have some of my own theories, but I want to hear yours. Yes, to my lawyer who communicated it to me. 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. 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. Is that just an interpretation or did they say anything that suggested to you that the fact that you had gone to a private school and grown up in an upper-middle-class situation meant that you could never at any point consider yourself low-income? 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. [2], Fierceton refused, and a week before she withdrew from the Rhodes Scholarship, Penn's Office of Student Conduct (OSC) notified Fierceton it, too, would be investigating. And I think psychologically one way people feel safer about it is to say: No, that happens to other people. You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. In November 2020, Mackenzie Fierceton was one of just 32 students to be awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. Fierceton said later that she had never used the word "poor" to describe herself or her childhood. At the end of the march they were addressed by Fierceton and other FGLI students. [4] After gathering all the evidence, they approached Driver's widow, Roxanne Logan, who had not been informed of the accessibility issues and delays involved in her husband's death; in fact she had been given the impression he had been evacuated from the building almost as soon as he began experiencing symptoms. And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? A 24-year-old Rhodes Scholar has left the prestigious program after being accused of lying about growing up poor, reports say. But I guess I cant say for sure. [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. But I guess I cant say for sure. She petitioned the court, and was able to successfully have her name removed, with a judge ruling that there wasnt enough evidence to substantiate the abuse allegations specifically, saying, While it is possible that Petitioner was the cause of the alleged injuries, the court cannot make that finding by a preponderance of the evidence based on the evidence presented.. Our concern is instead with the conduct of our. 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. 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