On Saturday afternoon, Fierceton said she found herself in a Zoom meeting for several hours with 10 other finalists from this region. And its funny, cause it just made me so frustrated and I actually went back and read it. "You can't couch-surf in a pandemic", Norton said. "[2], In December, an anonymous 22-page letter was sent to the U.S. office of the Rhodes Trust, which administers the scholarship program. 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. I really appreciate it. It was more, I think, in the times after and the months after where I ended up like giving different medical records and all of these things to corroborate my account, but there were a few questions that were very specific to what had happened. I didnt encounter many of them in the two years that I was living in foster families. Fine. And what area of it are you going to explore with your Ph.D.? RG: Mhmm. 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. 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. [1]:86, Morrison prospered in her medical career, and she provided generously for her daughter, allowing her to ride horses, go on river rafting trips and attend exclusive private schools, such as Whitfield, in nearby Creve Coeur, where annual tuition was almost $30,000. 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. I cant say how many questions are left and were close to done. [2], Fierceton shared the information she had with Logan, who in turn took it to a law firm that investigated further. But that was definitely a driving force for why I decided, ultimately, to withdraw because I felt like: OK, federal prison is no joke. And so, like I mentioned earlier, I dont want to go over too much of the history that led up to your battle with Penn and with the Rhodes trust, because people can find that in The New Yorker article that came out recently, you went over that in some pretty decent length; in Katie Courics podcast in a recent interview there. Fierceton clarified the details in question and Ruderman said she understood better. "[2], Fierceton was one of 15 freshmen made Civic Scholars, a program focused on social justice and community service, with an emphasis on confronting the intersections of identity and privilege. RG: So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? It was: Shes a spoiled little brat. So the Rhodes Trust ended up after their quote-investigation, and I submitted all the evidence, they ended up still recommending that my scholarship be rescinded, uh, but I had another opportunity to respond to their report, which I absolutely wanted to do. It didnt, though, to the University of Pennsylvania. I do think that it is a huge defense mechanism that people deploy. [19] The New York Post wrote that "[t]he case exposes the murky underbelly of elite schools like Penn. And MacKenzie is the only one whos allowed to answer these questions. RG: Well, Mackenzie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your 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. And I kind of felt like things were resolved until the next week when there was more [laughs] more downhill event. Her mentor told Licht afterwards that "it felt like an attack on a student" and that she had never experienced anything like it. 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). [14], Fierceton and her faculty supporters have suspected that Penn's investigation of her, and its determination to cast aspersions on her credibility, may be related to her role in fomenting a wrongful death suit filed against the university in August 2020, before she had been announced as a Rhodes Scholarship winner. Since we began the Reshuffled journey, any mention of foster care grabs my attention, the same with Tracy. Yeah. 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 Im like: I dont know what else I could give them that would possibly convince them if their belief is as a 15-year-old, 16-year-old was journaling about my experience of abuse and hiding it in an air vent, and it was actually secretly all a plan to like accuse my mother of abuse and go into foster care so I could have a sad story. And so I did definitely have that kind of like: I have no idea what else is going to convince these people. 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. She wasn't poor and grew up in a wealthy household with a successful mother. [2] Katie Couric had Fierceton as a guest on her podcast a week later. Its a very different lifestyle. 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. As youve had time to sort through this, what do you think was driving Penn to go through this process, which they had to know, at some level, would cost them? "It is seven years later, and I am still having to prove and prove and prove what has happened to me." My life is over, Im in the hospital, Im at rock bottom. [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. RG: And do you know Linda Tirado? But the outline of the story is this: Mackenzie was raised in a wealthy St. Louis suburb by a single mother who was repeatedly abusive, according to two state agencies. There were so many there are, I guess I should say so many moving pieces. Its practically half of Americans, or more. But it was in the sense of: I didnt recognize myself both because I was beaten and my face was swollen and whatever, and I felt like at rock bottom and broken. Then the Philly paramedics couldnt figure out how to get to the building and then they couldnt get me out. 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. She was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome and released after three weeks. ", 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. They demanded that the university remove the notation from her file. 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. 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. 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. 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.. And eventually they filed a big wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020. Laura Flynn is our supervising producer. so that people have the background there. And at the time I was more in panic mode than like, let me step back and look at this logically, theres absolutely no case, this is an intimidation tactic to try to silence me and sign this NDA and withdraw from the Rhodes and agree to whatever terms they wanted me to agree to you. She had had a fairly upper middle class life yet was working at multiple fast food restaurants and barely getting by. Are we going to see these injuries? So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. And I asked again and just said: Ive had different experiences of harassment for the last four years at Penn. RG: Right. 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. Yes. And then it just launched into the first half being a line-by-line it felt like interrogation of my applications. 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