So, yes, an article came out in the local paper saying that she had been arrested. Yes, to my lawyer who communicated it to me. ")[3], The OSC report also concluded that nothing in her academic record warranted the revocation of either degree. And even now, The New Yorker quotes a lot from my childhood journals describing my abuse. Her mother was a doctor and Fierceton attended a prep school, but she was. And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . In early 2022, after stories about her struggle with Penn and the Rhodes Trust received national attention from stories in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New Yorker, commentators took the university, and American elite higher education in general, to task for its use of the story of Fierceton and some other recent Rhodes recipients as poverty porn and its shifting definition of an FGLI student. Theres no cell phone reception in the basement. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. [2], The next morning, when Fierceton awoke, Morrison told her she was taking her car keys and telling the school she was sick. [2], At the end of 2013, in the middle of her sophomore year, Fierceton was admitted to St. Luke's, where her mother worked, with a head injury. MF: So those questions really came later. In 2019, Fierceton testified in a court hearing that, in September 2014, her mother allegedly pushed her down a set of stairs and hit her in the face several times. And that is, I felt very defeated too. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? MF: No, I found it before. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? Because that was one of the ones that really blew my mind. And that was the end of it, 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. After her graduation summa cum laude, political science professor Anne Norton invited Fierceton to stay with her and her partner in their large house in Northwest Philadelphia for as long as she needed to in order to complete her master's over the next year. When I came to Penn and saw all of these students who were living that life, there was a sense of community and solidarity amongst us, which was very powerful for me because I just felt so out of place. And Im glad that people are having the kinds of systemic discussions that are so key to all of this. The court had ordered Fierceton and Morrison into family therapy, but the former was too afraid of the latter to do it. Penn claims that was meant purely for purposes of the program, to attract as many students as possible who could benefit from participation in it. And Im Ryan Grim, D.C. bureau chief of The Intercept. Im part of a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed in August, 2020. By those standards, the standards of real family, not one person I'm related to by blood meets those requirements or even comes close." Yes. "[2][j], The evening the story ran, Ruderman called Fierceton back and told her she had received some anonymously written emails casting doubt on what she had written. So I felt pretty confident. Ryan Grim: This weeks guest on Deconstructed is Mackenzie Fierceton, who was the subject of a recent story in The New Yorker. And that dynamic, I would say, [laughs] probably played a big part in all of this. And how much did she challenge your medical condition after that beating? And that dynamic, I would say, [laughs] probably played a big part in all of this. "We would never have believed any of it if we weren't living it." We dont believe you. Did she lie? And theyll openly talk about this. I think this is a conversation not necessarily for people who are still in question about what happened here. At school, she began confiding about her situation with a history teacher, telling them about her mother's physical abuse. Like there is more attention to systemic poverty and trying to keep children in their homes to begin with, I would say, which is important, because if you can keep kids in their homes, then theyre not in the system and facing that foster-to-prison pipeline. Yes. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse.. 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. 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. 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. [3], After the interview White emailed Morrison about how it went; she wrote back regretting that Fierceton continued to tell the same story. 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. . So these are all things Ive learned [laughs] I learned after the fact. Raised in Chesterfield, Missouri, a West County suburb of St. Louis, she attended and graduated from the Whitfield School in Creve Coeur. Now Im sobbing, Im hyperventilating, and the staff member interrupted and said: Can we have an estimate of how much time is left? She lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital, where she spent three days in intensive care. Right. 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. But there was another definition that was also along those lines that I fit, that was, again, public on the website. I want to talk about where you think that pushback came from. RG: First of all, thats one box? And then again there was trouble getting him out of the basement. And at the time I was like: Why what? Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. What happened the night you ended up in foster care? Enough bruises? Who are your biological family? Cause I had assumed it was her. I took photos of the building and sent it to them, and I was connecting them with different people who were in my class, who were in his class. Betsy Reed is The Intercepts editor in chief. Her mother had no explanation for the injuries, other than saying perhaps she had done it to herself. What foster family were you with in X,Y, Z year? But teachers noticed that Fierceton often seemed physically uncomfortable in her mother's presence, and a close friend noted that she was often injured. 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. And I decided to do it cause I felt like I had nothing to lose and I ended up making gratitude lists every day for years and it really was a very healing experience for me. Later, another Whitfield parent Morrison had talked to told this woman that she believed Fierceton had done this to get admitted to an Ivy League college, an idea which she found preposterous. RG: so that people have the background there. [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. The teen said she was sent to. And if you havent already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. MF: I mean, part of it is honestly like its looking at cause we just wanted to be as thorough as possible of when [laughs] I was crying, and then I was crying and taking breaths. Why would I do that? 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. [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 because poverty and abuse are so pervasive in society and particularly in a country that has such a minimal social safety net and has so much violence. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. I think they have said, well, theres different definitions and the dean who is the dean of the grad school said: Well, thats not our definition. The show was mixed by William Stanton. And when I asked her again when I was gathering all this evidence in 2020, she gave me the same answer of: I dont believe its relevant, and this box isnt relevant to admission. as a kid. As an anonymous letter writer revealed, however, she was also the privately educated child of a radiologist, brought up in an affluent suburb. [2], In March 2014, Fierceton began keeping a secret diary[a] documenting her life and her ruminations on her situation, writing it in her bedroom closet by the light of her phone and hiding it behind a ventilation panel. And so where is your story now? MF: Yes, definitely. A graduate student named Mackenzie Fierceton was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 only to have it stripped from her a few months later after allegations. 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. 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. RG: 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 so, Mackenzie, you and I were just talking offline. I mean, part of it is honestly like its looking at cause we just wanted to be as thorough as possible of when [laughs] I was crying, and then I was crying and taking breaths. Her mother was arrested and charged with child abuse, but those charges were later dropped; state courts later expunged the arrest and ordered her removed from the state's child-abuser registry. RG: Mhmm. And I was the one who uncovered my classmates death. So Rachel had it and Penn disputed it. The university, in its response to Mackenzies lawsuit, referred to Mackenzies mother as an accomplished physician and claimed that a court had found her allegations not to be credible. In The New Yorker article, one teacher had written: She showed up at my classroom door with a bloodied and battered face and then fainted., And then, Rachel Aviv, the reporter also quotes Sherry McClain, who was a nurse who was assigned to you, she said: She had two black eyes, and her hair was full of blood. 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. "[2], Fierceton answered yes. Who will spend some significant amount of time in poverty. "It is seven years later, and I am still having to prove and prove and prove what has happened to me." And at the time I was like: Why what? If you speak, Im going to disconnect you from the call. 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. No, I cant. It didnt have any facts of the case. And the theme of private school definitely came up many times over the course of the last year and a half. We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. In the presence of her mother that night at their house, Mackenzie repeated the same story to a visiting caseworker, who appeared to accept it. Like, it seemed like an airtight case from my perspective. 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. She ruined her moms career. I tried to help as much as I could. And, in this case, almost everyone who was involved in the university administration are upper middle class or very wealthy, highly academically educated white women. MF: She definitely asked some questions about it. So one question was: Are you from a low-income family? 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 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. I think [its] called Penn First, I believe, and it seems like you socially spent a lot of time with them? "Once you do something that the University sees as undermining its quest for power and prestige, it will not think twice about discarding you, humiliating you, and retaliating against you, which is exactly what they did" said one SP2 student in support of Fierceton. I cant remember if it was in the Rhodes essay or in another essay that, in hindsight, you wouldve tightened up. Picture: University of Pennsylvania/Instagram. Fine. And we entered the meeting and it immediately felt really hostile to me. 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: And whats the difference between the U.S. and English system? And so I wanted to start with where things really started to unravel for you. The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. And youre getting instruction from a university official that thats how youre supposed to fill it out, thats what the definition says online. My life is over, Im in the hospital, Im at rock bottom. Yeah. But it was definitely something I saw happening sort of this funneling of kids from the child welfare to criminal justice system. You have a good education and youre clearly smart. So, yes, an article came out in the local paper saying that she had been arrested. After her mother left, Fierceton got out of bed, found a spare set of keys and drove herself to school. A 24-year-old Rhodes Scholar has left the prestigious program after being accused of lying about growing up poor, reports say. You didnt grow up in crumbling projects your entire life. box, it's like you have to fit yourself in, saying: Are you the first in your family to attend? There were definitely, Im sure. [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. 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. 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. Deconstructed[emailprotected]theintercept.com, Photo illustration: Soohee Cho for The Intercept; Getty Images, AP, This weeks guest on Deconstructed is Mackenzie Fierceton, who was the subject of, The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. [2] Fierceton and her mentor reconstructed the conversation and transcribed it; the university has claimed it is inaccurate but the mentor stands by it. Mackenzie went to a private prep school, Whitfield, in St. Louis and was an active student. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. And we had a fairly lengthy conversation, just kind of going through the ins and outs of my childhood and left it at, she was like: OK, I understand now and Im just going to leave this. That evening that the article came out is when I got a call from the reporter saying: I got this anonymous email that said X, Y, Z, and I wanted to let you know. 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). Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? The dean of SP2 told Penn otherwise, but Fierceton noted that the school had never shared what its definition was. Attached were copies of the Missouri court orders expunging Morrison's arrest and removing her name from the DSS registry. 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. 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