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. And I ultimately didnt end up responding because I got a serious threats from Penn that if I didnt withdraw that they were going to come after my undergrad degree, and launch proceedings to revoke my undergrad degree, and never give me my M.S.W which I was supposed to graduate with in May 2021, I have not yet received that diploma if I didnt withdraw from the Rhodes and sign an NDA. She definitely asked some questions about it. 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. At her request Penn kept her contact information out of the school's directory on its website. MF: I think youre right. Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb. In the lawsuit filed on Dec. 21, Fierceton, a 2021 School of Social Policy . And that dynamic, I would say, [laughs] probably played a big part in all of this. I cant remember if it was in the Rhodes essay or in another essay that, in hindsight, you wouldve tightened up. MF: Yeah. 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. Which as Im sure youve learned since is a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of poverty . [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. Cause I had assumed it was her. The father's message was forwarded to Penn's general counsel, Wendy White, who got in touch with Morrison. [2], In the early 2000s the couple went through a protracted divorce during which a guardian ad litem was appointed to represent their daughter's interests at the custody hearing. 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. We started building this, and this is exactly who we built it for. I didnt really know what it was going to be, but I feel like its always good to have someone with you. Others echoed the criticism. And there was also the added threat that they would report me to the federal government for wire fraud if I didnt, again, withdraw from the Rhodes and sign this NDA. In 2020, former foster child Mackenzie Fierceton received a Rhodes Scholarship as a self-identified first generation, low income student at the University of Pennsylvania. [2], Shortly after the Rhodes investigation began, Rafaelle was informed that Penn was proposing to revoke Fierceton's bachelors on the grounds of her apparent self-misrepresentation. In any event, The University of Oxford, where Mackenzies doing her Ph.D., has remained supportive, and in the wake of The New Yorker investigation, and the resulting protests from students and faculty, Penn lifted the hold on her degree. 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. The 35-year-old has been hit with two warrants for his arrest. MF: Yeah. 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. 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. And with that, like you said, notion of: Well, theres no way that you went to private school and all of this could have still happened, or that you could be low-income now and this idea that socioeconomic status is permanent. That would have to be the rationale that they would have for those childhood journals to be faked. RG: in America. Beth Winkelstein, at the time Penn's deputy provost, signed off on her application for the school, writing that "Mackenzie understands what it is like to be an at-risk youth, and she is determined to re-make the systems that block rather than facilitate success. And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. RG: And all of us, no matter what our situation, are not completely safe from it. But when you're filling out a box where it's "yes" or "no" and there's no more information or "kind of!" Is that your experience with it as well? She was one of only 32 high school students selected from a pool of 2300 applicants. [23] In mid-April, Penn released Fierceton's master's degree. And we entered the meeting and it immediately felt really hostile to me. By those standards, the standards of real family, not one person I'm related to by blood meets those requirements or even comes close." 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, 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. 24-year-old Mackenzie Fierceton won the Rhodes scholarship in November 2020, but a tip-off to the prestigious committee kicked off a deeper investigation into the student's background. 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. Is it as well explored territory as a school-to-prison pipeline? Because thats not how we understand poverty. 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. And so the fact that shes continued pursuing you to me kind of demonstrates the entire case. Theres a lot of chaos. The award brings the number of Penn Rhodes Scholars to 31 since the scholarship's inception in 1902. And then the other question was: Are you the first in your family to attend college? RG: And so if its a well-educated white girl from a private school, thats way too close to home for a lot of these elites. RG: Right. In the transcript, I wrote it was really just focused on: What happened the night you went into foster care? 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. Is that your experience with it as well? "Was the problem that a child who was placed into foster care and had no contact with her biological mother wasn't actually a first-generation college student? As in Fierceton's case, it took an hour to remove Driver from the building. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. 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. And they released this quote-unquote report in April of 2021 with their findings. 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. Or was the real issue that Fierceton did not really fit the profile of a suffering student who needed the benevolence of an Ivy League school?" The 23-year-old planned to use. So you use what you have, uh, which are the definitions that were already out there. But I got a bit of pressure from Penn to do that. So first-generation and/or low-income, again, is the acronym. But that was definitely a driving force for why I decided, ultimately, to withdraw because I felt like: OK, federal prison is no joke. 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". [3], Before that happened, Fierceton withdrew from the scholarship on her own. It, too, alleged that Fierceton was misrepresenting herself as having been poor and grown up entirely in foster care, with many photos of Fierceton as a little girl on the beach and riding horses, and other activities usually associated with affluence. And I havent been on any of the Penn websites. Why would I do that? And when will you have finished up your Ph.D.? 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. MF: Yeah. Fierceton believes it was likely sent by Morrison or one of her close relatives. What about Rhodes? Mackenzie is the soap's first transgender character, added to the series after Stone wrote to executive producer Jason Herbison to pitch the character. And I was having flashbacks to cross-examinations and depositions Id given about this which later made sense, because we found out that Wendy White had spoken with one of Carries defense lawyers. Mackenzie went to a private prep school, Whitfield, in St. Louis and was an active student. I really appreciate it. [f] Fierceton felt no ambivalence about her answer. ")[3], The OSC report also concluded that nothing in her academic record warranted the revocation of either degree. And we have this idea of what a person looks like who commits a crime or who gets arrested for child abuse. Michael Hayes, who had prosecuted Morrison, told the Chronicle that "The more I learned, the less certain I became about what really happened. She lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital, where she spent three days in intensive care. Yeah, I mean, so that specific definition wasnt public until 2018. And she quickly got interest of a book deal because she was obviously such a great writer. And its no offense its not like the most profound . Uh, my lawyer. 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