If you havent read the story yet, I highly recommend pausing this, and giving it a read first, because I try not to go over too much of the same territory in my interview with her. 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. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. She recalled showing up at the foster home with her new clothes in a plastic bag, feeling "like a passenger in my own body", she recalled later. The award brings the number of Penn Rhodes Scholars to 31 since the scholarship's inception in 1902. 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. Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. And Penn is still claiming that those are fake journals. 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 . [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 Im glad that people are having the kinds of systemic discussions that are so key to all of this. My life is over, Im in the hospital, Im at rock bottom. RG: Right. Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. Yes, it may be true that institutions like UPenn give students like Fierceton opportunities because of their story, but that does not mean her narrative is theirs for the taking. 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? 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". She was abused, but there is not enough blood." Yeah. MF: So thats the background of him. 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. In The New Yorker piece, a nurse assigned to Mackenzie is quoted as saying, She had two black eyes, and her hair was full of blood. And she ended up responding right away, and asked to get on a phone call. And so I was like, of course, Im going to respond again. And then I remembered that my teacher had told me to write a gratitude list. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse., No, I found it before. That night at home, Morrison, who had apparently learned of the report, confronted her daughter about it. 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. And those other people are kind of like the orphans that we think of in Dickensian novels. And thats actually one of the things that, if there was any doubt whatsoever about this story, in some ways it was settled by that. But when you're filling out a box where it's "yes" or "no" and there's no more information or "kind of!" Mackenzie is currently suing the university. MF: At first there was actually, there was contention. She didnt even know what building he had died in. There was, yes, disagreement, because I said there was blood in my hair in the essay, they said there wasnt enough blood or there wasnt blood or something. 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. And Im kind of one of the lucky ones where I had really expansive and thorough documentation for all the parts of this story. And theres also literature thats economic literature versus sociology, different fields have different perspectives on what that relationship between foster care and the criminal justice system is and what the causes are. "She has become emboldened over time, and has been successful with her evolving tale for 6 yrs. Fine. While that was not literally true, Penn's own definition of an FGLI student included those who have a "strained or limited" relationship with a parent who has graduated from college. 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. And so, Mackenzie, you and I were just talking offline. 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? Two other women he was involved with had also reported him to law enforcement). No, I cant. [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. Fierceton was mentioned in the complaint as having experienced similar issues following her seizure; she was deposed in the suit in March 2021, the month before the university's investigation led her to withdraw from the Rhodes Scholarship. 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. Cause Ive just wanted to go on with my life and, you know, live it. 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. Then, the first-generation box. Mackenzie Fierceton: Yeah. Nor is she obligated to meet their expectations of her. As in her case, first responders had experienced similar delays in finding and reaching the building, and difficulties removing Driver once they did due to the same accessibility issues. RG: Penn officials, of course, have said the interview was appropriate. [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. White, who had apparently drafted the offer, added a sentence to it requiring Fierceton to say she was agreeing to it "voluntarily and without pressure" after she learned that Fierceton was complaining to professors that she felt Penn was pressuring her to do this. And so can you talk a little bit about your research? [2], Morrison's arrest had been reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,[6] where commenters on the online version of the story took her side, speculating that Fierceton was "an entitled brat" who had vengefully fabricated charges that had the potential to end her mother's medical career. Yes, definitely. And so thats the low-income box. Fierceton was released after four days. Because processes become Kafkaesque very quickly. And the chain of events that happened leading into foster care? You know, in my personal experience, there were not very many kids who came from a background like me. Have you ever heard of her case? And the theme of private school definitely came up many times over the course of the last year and a half. It's a hard scholarship to win, but Fierceton. 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. [2], Over the middle of 2020, Fierceton became active in the Black Lives Matter protests at Penn. But I got a bit of pressure from Penn to do that. And please go and leave us a rating or a review it helps people find the show. [2], The fine was later withdrawn after it was found to conflict with a provision of the university's charter prohibiting the imposition of fines in cases involving academic integrity. 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. The fact that they even challenged that really does expose a lot of whats going on here because I assume in their mind, theyre saying: Well, she went to this private school; she had a nice house; her mom probably drove a nice car maybe you even drove a decent car! 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. What about Rhodes? And I turned over all this information to his widow. [2], In December 2021 Fierceton retained another lawyer pro bono and filed her own suit against Penn, alleging that the university's investigations into her history and how she had represented herself was a "sham", undertaken with the intent of forcing her to withdraw from the Rhodes Scholarship and damaging her credibility as a witness in the Driver suit, constituting tortious interference with a business relationship and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. MF: But yeah, that, I guess, just one point of clarification that I recently, in the last few months, just found out about. Fierceton wrote to SP2 dean Sara Bachman complaining about the interview, saying she felt "worthlessness, hopelessness, and shame" for a week afterwards. In the transcript, I wrote it was really just focused on: What happened the night you went into foster care? 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