MF: Yeah. The Inquirer story came out in November 2020. Am I right about that? Thank you so much for having me. Both reports refrained from expressing an opinion about the truth of her abuse allegations. She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. RG: And because you were not just low-income, actually no income, other than the jobs that you were working nobody has complained about the low-income one, right? We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer erroneously wrote that she had grown up poor. So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. Since we began the Reshuffled journey, any mention of foster care grabs my attention, the same with Tracy. RG: So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? How much research has been done on the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline? I wrote a poem about the actual what the message was, which is so cheesy and Im cringing at my 17-year-old self [laughs], but it was about the healing power of gratitude. And where are you at school? There were three instances of attempted contact from her family or foster family. Is that what sent you into a surreal state? RG: Talk just a little bit about that case . It's a hard scholarship to win, but Fierceton. [2], Morrison, no longer employed by St. Luke's, then began the process of trying to restore her reputation by having all references to it removed from the public record. "We have concluded that there is a basis for serious concern and that further investigation by the Rhodes Committee may be appropriate", she wrote. RG: Is that what sent you into a surreal state? MF: So thats the background of him. ", However, in its report, Penn notes that Fierceton had, in an essay (which it allows may not have actually been submitted) for her application for a travel, The Rhodes report acknowledged her documentation of an email she wrote to a reporter at the, Penn's investigation noted that even if Fierceton had been referring to the Chesterfield police rather than the. [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. As an anonymous letter writer revealed, however, she was also the privately educated child of a radiologist, brought up in an affluent suburb. I identify with the FGLI umbrella term and definitely being a low-income student, but Ive never really called myself a standalone first-generation. And the chain of events that happened leading into foster care? Have you ever heard of her case? Which as Im sure youve learned since is a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of poverty . A college counselor suggested she apply through QuestBridge, a nonprofit that helps qualified students in need find schools that will give them full financial support. One, Michael Raffaele, said he believed Morrison was trying to leave Fierceton with no other options. And Im glad that people are having the kinds of systemic discussions that are so key to all of this. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. And Ive brought my mentor with me. 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. She definitely asked some questions about it. You didnt grow up in crumbling projects your entire life. Enough blood? So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? 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. So the students had to form a human chain from the first floor down to the basement where all our classes are to relay instructions from the paramedics, the Philadelphia paramedics, to the professor who was, to my understanding, performing CPR. And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. [14], The publicity led 150 Penn students to stage a walkout from classes to demonstrate in support of Fierceton. Fierceton earned her bachelor's degree in political science from the College of Arts & Sciences and is . MF: No, I found it before. ", Morrison said. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. What happened after you went out of the hospital? So one question was: Are you from a low-income family? Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. [2], The next morning, when Fierceton awoke, Morrison told her she was taking her car keys and telling the school she was sick. 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. Jay Caspian Kang sounded similar themes in two different New York Times newsletters discussing Fierceton's story. Shes lying, shes a spoiled brat, this, that, and the other which looking back at the time I just felt absolutely horrible. That was my personal statement. Mackenzie, for her part, was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania and, in her sophomore year, won a Rhodes Scholarship. RG: Instead, I want to talk more about what this says about the system, that something so seemingly irrational could be produced by this system, and actually could be predicted to be produced by this system in some ways. And so was it later, in a different conversation where they asked about the line in the essay about not being able to recognize yourself or is there some illusion to that in the transcript that you found? She began to realize that she had no sense of identity. Now anyone who earns that distinction is to be commended, but the article also noted that Mackenzie had aged out of foster care . And its striking to see just the continuing to push of what happened. First of all, thats one box? She entered foster care only at the age of 17, after making a complaint of abuse against Dr.. [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. [9][3], In her sophomore year, Fierceton, already majoring in political science,[3] decided to pursue social work as a career, with the goal of being a voice for children in foster care like the ones she had come to know. [2], In public, while she was at Whitfield, Morrison and her daughter seemed to evoke the Gilmore Girls, echoing that television series's main characters, a single mother and her precocious daughter with a close and strong relationship. If we review your medical records, are we going to see you had broken ribs and facial injuries? She had begun to remember more about the incident, and while still not certain how it had happened recalled that before it she and her mother had been fighting about Lovelace. But I guess I cant say for sure. And I ended up reaching out to his widow I found her on Facebook and sent her a message just to say: You know, I think I found some information. But there was another definition that was also along those lines that I fit, that was, again, public on the website. The mother hired a high-powered attorney and engaged in a local campaign to discredit Mackenzie. So I could imagine why at some point youd be like, you know what, Im just not going to keep taking Ls here. At first she went to a friend's home in Ohio and then returned to the Philadelphia area as May and graduation approached to live with a classmate's family. And I dont remember exactly what their statement was, but they disputed it. RG: Like questioning: How much blood? Mackenzie Fierceton was named Penn's 2021 Rhodes Scholar. in America. [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. Yeah. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse.. Fine. What about Rhodes? Its practically half of Americans, or more. Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system. Yes, to my lawyer who communicated it to me. 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 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. "She has become emboldened over time, and has been successful with her evolving tale for 6 yrs. The University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday announced it will stop withholding a master's degree from Mackenzie Fierceton, the former student at the center of a recent New Yorker magazine. RG: And one of the main things they pointed to was that she had gone to this private school . Mhmm. He was earlier arrested in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The award brings the number of Penn Rhodes Scholars to 31 since the scholarship's inception in 1902. My life is over, Im in the hospital, Im at rock bottom. Her mother was a doctor and Fierceton attended a prep school, but she was. [2], Two weeks after the New Yorker article was published, Fierceton gave an interview to The Intercept's Ryan Grim for an installment of the Deconstructed podcast. Yes, definitely. I said were almost done. Brandt, the Chesterfield police detective who had originally investigated the case, said later that the prosecutor never explained to her what that new evidence was. MF: Yeah, so Penn First for the whole FGLI community. And the staff member saying like: I understand, can you please give Mackenzie an estimate of how many questions are left? MF: You know, I honestly dont know. I had never heard of FGLI, but these labels resonated with a story I was still trying to process. Whereas a social worker comes into a poor home and looks around and sees just the normal poverty that our system has foisted on people and says: Oh, well, clearly this is somebody that needs to be stripped out of here. And that feels like one of them where it feels like the system is willfully misunderstanding reality in order to bend it in their direction. [2] Winkelstein, who has a Ph.D. in bioengineering and has studied injuries,[3] then proceeded to interrogate Fierceton at length about her abuse and hospitalization, in a manner that led Fierceton to believe that not only did Winkelstein doubt her story but had spoken with Morrison. And so that was when it really transitioned, the second half of it, into these really intimate questions about my abuse until the point where I was sobbing and couldnt answer the questions anymore. And in the U.S., there is much more pressure to pull kids out of homes, right? And then the focus shifted to the second box. So first-generation and/or low-income, again, is the acronym. In addition to the complaint she had made against Lovelace, a similar complaint to police that her mother was abusing prescription drugs also did not yield any evidence to support it. 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. MF: She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. And so, yes, if the student, then, is no longer useful, I could imagine it turning. 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. [3], By the end of the interview Fierceton was crying. Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb. To me, it seems like any reader of the English language would read that in a literary sense , RG: of its self-exploration, self-doubt, trauma. as a kid. When they did, they were unable to get stretchers or backboards down Caster's stairways or elevators as there was insufficient space. The university's police did not know at first where the building was and the city's paramedics did not know how to get to it. The wellness director told her she would have to notify the state's Department of Social Services (DSS) of the incident. This made Fierceton feel as if she were being watched for anything she did that could be used against the state's case by her mother. She had bruises all over her body in different stages of healing an obvious sign of child abuse., No, I found it before. 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. And then throughout the now a year and a half process [laughs] of different sort of invented processes that happened, eventually the university was like: OK, I guess shes low-income. I think its a reflection of the systemic prejudices . I didnt even really think about it when I checked it, because I felt like I had a lot of information that backed it up. [2], Morrison's lawyer questioned Fierceton closely about apparent differences between her medical records from the hospital and her description of her injuries in a scholarship application essay the lawyer had obtained, and other details from the latter, such as the "metallic" taste of a feeding tube that was plastic and her claim that she was unable to recognize her own facial features in the hospital mirror, when her medical records showed that her injuries were well short of being even temporarily disfiguring. And we have our own specific grad school definitions. And the chain of events that happened leading into foster care? 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. January 7, 2022. [2] The psychologist testified that she had seen both mother and daughter during 2007 and 2008. A petition to the county circuit court to have the arrest expunged was granted in a one-page order that attributed the arrest to "false information". Betsy Reed is The Intercepts editor in chief. But it doesnt mean you were always low-income, just that you are now. You know, I believe the first people who said that was the Rhodes Trust. So that was what that specific sentence in The New Yorker was referencing is this kind of condensing this group of people and to one sentence. [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. And MacKenzie is the only one whos allowed to answer these questions. In retrospect, I just honestly wish I had never written about those people, but it was kind of one of those things where I was like: OK, I need to make my point. First, Morrison had tried to send Fierceton some jewelry during her freshman year and contacted the university to find out how to get in touch with her; when Fierceton was informed of this she said she had a, "Regardless of the actual reason for her name change," Penn's lawyers write in their response to her lawsuit, "Fierceton effectively fastened a buffer of separation between her real life story and the false story she had cultivated for Penn and others. But I think a lot of it stems from the current policies and practices of federal and local funding and what kind of programs theyre funding for kids. In the lawsuit filed on Dec. 21, Fierceton, a 2021 School of Social Policy . MF: verbally. 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. And they were the ones I believe and this is public now because Penn attached it to their response to the lawsuit I filed and I believe they were the first ones to mention that I had gone to private school and that they were questioning if I was low-income. So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. RG: And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? And what happened after that? 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. She also alleged that Penn had on many occasions failed to follow its own disciplinary policies in its investigation of her.[16]. I cant remember if it was in the Rhodes essay or in another essay that, in hindsight, you wouldve tightened up. 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. She didnt know any of the circumstances of his death. They took photographs of Caster's staircases and elevators, and interviewed witnesses and some of the Penn paramedics who had responded. She applied to a program at Penn's School of Social Policy and Practice (commonly referred to at Penn as SP2) that would allow her to begin graduate studies while still an undergraduate, so she could graduate with a master's degree in the field a year after completing her undergraduate degree. Fierceton said later that she had never used the word "poor" to describe herself or her childhood. MF: But yeah, that, I guess, just one point of clarification that I recently, in the last few months, just found out about. And because you were not just low-income, actually no income, other than the jobs that you were working nobody has complained about the low-income one, right? Cause then you cant think that it could be you. She considered the advantages and disadvantages of reporting her mother, but ultimately feared she might not even be believed, as her mother would tell people she was mentally ill or lying. Right. It recommended the scholarship be rescinded. 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. "They are the people that support you, look out for you, & love you unconditionally. Fierceton joins Ryan Grim to discuss the saga of her battle with UPenn and why the Ivy Leagueinstitution seems to have so much trouble recognizing the complexity of poverty in America. Medical records, records from child welfare services, corroborating letters from detectives and lawyers and elementary, middle, and high school teachers, childhood friends, professors basically everyone who had known me. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at [emailprotected] Thanks so much! Our grad school had no specific definitions or instructions, but I did have a relationship with the associate director of admissions at the time. And she had gone to a private school growing up. So, yes, an article came out in the local paper saying that she had been arrested. Theres people who span all different kinds of experiences. There was also the part of me that was terrified. . When she was a teenager, she showed up bloodied and bruised at her elite private school. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. 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