She ruined her moms career. But yeah, that, I guess, just one point of clarification that I recently, in the last few months, just found out about. Her mothers name was entered into a registry of abusers. "Without her trauma, she didnt matter", wrote a commentator in the Tulane Hullabaloo. MF: So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. I reached out for a response to the University of Pennsylvania and also Provost Beth Winkelstein and General Counsel Wendy White for a response, as well as to Mackenzies biological mother. MF: Yeah. RG: Interesting. But its interesting because most of the questions are about these applications and then the second half is when it turns to these questions of the abuse. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. And thats an unfortunate reality so many survivors experience, not having a lot of documentation. And its mentioned briefly. 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. A picture of her was posted at the nurse's station should she make the attempt. Yeah. 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. A cousin who lived with the Morrisons for a while did not see any signs of abuse and believed it was possible Fierceton could have inflicted the injuries herself. So that was, I think later on that specific line came into question. And I kind of felt like things were resolved until the next week when there was more [laughs] more downhill event. 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. There were three instances of attempted contact from her family or foster family. That is when I would trace it back to. And many more vicious sentiments. So one of the questions that you mentioned that they asked was about your essay , 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. There were some pretty basic errors, such as my name, my birth name, and my birth place, and claiming that I didnt have a sibling, that I wasnt low-income, a lot of facts that were pretty easily disputed. And it has, has she stuck by that? 207 1,590 6,062 Show this thread Mackenzie Fierceton @MFierceton Aug 8 Will never not make my day to see this on the shelf. At first she explained Fierceton's injuries as either having been caused by an intruder or somehow self-inflicted, then said her daughter had fallen downstairs while she was trying to help her get some chewing gum out of her hair. The university writes: After those who knew Fierceton raised questions about her story, it was investigated not just once, but several times, and not just by Penn faculty and staff, but also the Rhodes Trust. There, she wandered the hallways until she found the history teacher, and collapsed. [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. RG: Is that what sent you into a surreal state? So that was what the actual poem and personal statement was about [laughs.] So it makes some sense that they were very similar questions. And Penn is still claiming that those are fake journals. So you use what you have, uh, which are the definitions that were already out there. "It is seven years later, and I am still having to prove and prove and prove what has happened to me." I had no idea what she already knew. [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. How much research has been done on the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline? Fierceton had also brought her mentor, a staff member at the university's Civic House, into the meeting; at the outset Winkelstein told the woman she could not speak or she would be disconnected immediately. 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. That night at home, Morrison, who had apparently learned of the report, confronted her daughter about it. Jay Caspian Kang sounded similar themes in two different New York Times newsletters discussing Fierceton's story. There was also the part of me that was terrified. 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. Our grad school had no specific definitions or instructions, but I did have a relationship with the associate director of admissions at the time. My understanding is there were two anonymous emails. And then The New Yorker adds in parentheses that a Penn spokesperson says: Yeah, well, thats not the definition that we use. And I started interviewing people who were in the class where he died and who were in nearby classes where he died, who knew him, and paramedics who were Penn paramedics and just as many people as I could. MF: Yeah. "I think that we could contribute to the community, the broader Philadelphia community, and the West Philadelphia community more positively, instead of doing things that are not only undermining them but are actively policing them, and end up creating and perpetuating more violence," she told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university's student newspaper. And I ended up reading the comments, and the comments were just horrendous. MF: She definitely asked some questions about it. or in graduate school. I think for a lot of us, we have to sort of other poverty and abuse and put it in a box, partly, to protect ourselves. RG: And do you know Linda Tirado? And that felt very powerful in an institution where the overwhelming majority of people are coming from two-parent households, extremely wealthy, like a whole nother level of wealth that I have really ever seen, in my life in terms of just around me, like the 1 percent to the 0.001 percent. So I was like: OK, fine. That they would forward charges to the federal government of wire fraud. RG: Mhmm. [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. Right. What happened the night before? In November 2020, Mackenzie Fierceton was one of just 32 students to be awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. 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. RG: I want to talk about where you think that pushback came from. I think this is a conversation not necessarily for people who are still in question about what happened here. And eventually they filed a big wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020. And I asked again and just said: Ive had different experiences of harassment for the last four years at Penn. 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 so youre becoming rather inconvenient to the university at that point , I would assume, which plays into the way that universities and elite structures think of diversity, I think. Were close to done. And that is, I felt very defeated too. [14], The publicity led 150 Penn students to stage a walkout from classes to demonstrate in support of Fierceton. 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. MF: Its hard to say. 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. So therefore that doesnt fit their understanding of low-income, despite the fact that your mother was no longer your legal guardian, youre a ward of the state. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of. 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. Her mentor told Licht afterwards that "it felt like an attack on a student" and that she had never experienced anything like 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. RG: So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? "[2], Fierceton answered yes. But her mother wasnt finished with her. "[2], In December, an anonymous 22-page letter was sent to the U.S. office of the Rhodes Trust, which administers the scholarship program. The 23-year-old planned to use. [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. "She was falling apart under the academic stresses at school and was exhausted, and I believe looking for an out." Every objective and careful reviewer of the facts in this case including the Rhodes Trust, Penns Office of Student Conduct, a faculty committee from Fiercetons graduate school at Penn, and a hearing panel consisting of faculty and students from other Penn schools concluded that Fierceton had not been truthful.. And still, it was just like: Nope. in America. That is when I would trace it back to. 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. 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. [2][g], The packages she says she received were supplemented by hangup calls, which a faculty member Fierceton occasionally lived with recalled her receiving in the months preceding the trial of her mother's lawsuit against DSS later in her junior year. So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use? 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. Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. Its a very under-researched field. RG: Right. MF: Yeah. "[3][l], The Chronicle story led to nationwide coverage,[17][18] most of which framed the narrative as Penn and the Rhodes Trust had in their reports, depicting Fierceton as yet another exposed fraud. 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