[2] Her father, Billy Terrell,[1] had been an actor in soap operas. I mean, youd been taking loss after loss, despite having the facts on your side. And I turned over all this information to his widow. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of lying. And thats again, like not because there isnt abuse or neglect going on in families that looked like mine, or biological families that looked like mine. In addition to reiterating many of the themes of comments made by her and her supporters in the previous articles, including criticism of the Rhodes and Penn investigations (the former of which Grim noted she was putting air quotes around when she mentioned it), she expressed a belief that her story had triggered a defensive anxiety in women like Finkelstein and White:[4]. And they released this quote-unquote report in April of 2021 with their findings. Not as something that is for the benefit of the MacKenzies, the people who were being brought into the school, but actually for the benefit of the university itself, its image and also for the students. The 23-year-old planned to use. 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. 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. But it was definitely something I saw happening sort of this funneling of kids from the child welfare to criminal justice system. Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. And youre getting instruction from a university official that that's how you're supposed to fill it out, that's what the definition says online. The teen said she was sent to. Anything interesting in that that you noticed? Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. And now they have to face the fact that someone who looks like them, who shares all these identities with them, could be the source of all of this harm. Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb. verbally. In The New Yorker article, one teacher had written: She showed up at my classroom door with a bloodied and battered face and then fainted., RG: And then, Rachel Aviv, the reporter also quotes Sherry McClain, who was a nurse who was assigned to you, she said: She had two black eyes, and her hair was full of blood. Detective Carrie Brandt, who had been planning to follow up on the hotline report at Whitfield that day, instead interviewed Fierceton at the hospital. So first-generation and/or low-income, again, is the acronym. Given the pandemic, Rhodes Scholar judges interviewed candidates over Zoom. It didnt, though, to the University of Pennsylvania. And I think said something along the lines of there were things missing and it was distorted. And she had gone to a private school growing up. [2] When she turned 18, she formally left foster care[d] but continued living with the family whose home she was in. He died after a medical emergency in a basement of UPenn's Caster Building in 2018. But in this application they had two questions which are to determine financial aid. And then theres also foster siblings in the sense of other people who are in the foster care system who youre living with. Anything in particular jump out at you after having read back over that transcript? I had no idea what she already knew. When asked what she might have done differently, Fierceton told the Chronicle that while she had at some points wished she had never applied to Penn, and later considered rephrasing some of the things she wrote on her essays and applications, "[w]here I've landed is that I have a right to write about my experiences as I experienced them. And now they have to face the fact that someone who looks like them, who shares all these identities with them, could be the source of all of this harm. RG: Right. She had seen no signs of abuse in the relationship and considered Fierceton to be the dominant personality in it. Youre engaged in a lawsuit with Penn. But I guess I cant say for sure. Fierceton had apparently made much of her status as a 'first generation, low income' student, an abuse survivor who aged out of foster care. "[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. According to Fierceton, her mother pushed her down the stairs and then beat her extensively at the bottom. MF: So [laughs] I feel like I could go on for hours about that. 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. RG: And do you know Linda Tirado? This is derived from language in the federal Higher Education Act, which ties first-generation status to the educational attainment of the parent the student "regularly resides with and receives support from". "[2], Near the end of November Fierceton was named one of 32 Rhodes scholars from the U.S. for the year. She and a separate witness said records of child-welfare agencies from years earlier are not easy to obtain. Yes. She got straight A's, served in student government, managed the field hockey team, played varsity soccer, and volunteered to assist with the local Special Olympics. Like there is more attention to systemic poverty and trying to keep children in their homes to begin with, I would say, which is important, because if you can keep kids in their homes, then theyre not in the system and facing that foster-to-prison pipeline. Yeah. This can happen to someone in my community. on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadnt done it? So, yes. And then the focus shifted to the second box. Like one of them was describing a biological child in a house as another foster child, and something about a half-brother or something.What were those and how were those errors kind of deployed against you? No, I cant. Mhmm. Fierceton considered dropping out, but "if I truly can't do this, where am I supposed to return to? he asked in the first. 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. [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. In other words, if you are parent who says that you are wishing your daughter well and youre telling the authorities that shes just mentally ill and its just a really, really sad and tragic case that shes making up all of these allegations of abuse and throwing herself down stairs, and beating herself up all for cries for help, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera you wouldnt then also pursue a multi-year long effort to destroy her life. She was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome and released after three weeks. For all the readers could have known, there could have been a videotape of it happening. RG: Did they make that threat in writing or was that . Her supporters at Penn have called for the university's acting provost, Beth Winkelstein, to be held accountable for her role in the investigation, which has been characterized as a continuation of the abuse. Because thats not how we understand poverty. 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 to me, I'm like I am a household of one, so I am the only person in my family. On Saturday afternoon, Fierceton said she found herself in a Zoom meeting for several hours with 10 other finalists from this region. Mackenzie went to a private prep school, Whitfield, in St. Louis and was an active student. . 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. Nor is she obligated to meet their expectations of her. 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. "We have concluded that there is a basis for serious concern and that further investigation by the Rhodes Committee may be appropriate", she wrote. And like: Why are you considered an independent student? I tried to help as much as I could. The mother of a friend of Fierceton's recalls that when she told Morrison on the phone that she "was not interested" in hearing what Morrison had to say, she got angry and confrontational. [H]onestly, first-generation is never something I've really identified with fully. She, to my knowledge, has stuck by that. In the presence of her mother that night at their house, Mackenzie repeated the same story to a visiting caseworker, who appeared to accept it. MF: Absolutely. But yeah, that, I guess, just one point of clarification that I recently, in the last few months, just found out about. "[12] Gutmann, soon to step down from her position to serve as U.S. ambassador to Germany, had made increasing the amount of FGLI students at Penn a priority in her previous 17 years as the university's president. At first there was actually, there was contention. Mother and daughter both told the same stories they had earlier; Morrison depicted her daughter as "willful and intense", claiming she had bought and read many books to try to help her understand the issues she said Fierceton had. RG: Nothing I have is persuasive to these people. January 7, 2022. But she says she occasionally received packages at her dorm room containing objects she suspected had come from her mother, such as a bracelet with an inscription about finding the truth, or others close to her, such as a pair of sneakers, which she believed Lovelace, who had sometimes helped her stretch before workouts, had sent. RG: Penn didnt respond to a request for comment, but in its response to Mackenzies lawsuit, they write: Penn denies that there are accessibility problems with the Caster Building which contributed to Mackenzies medical emergency or to [Cameron] Drivers death. At the end of the march they were addressed by Fierceton and other FGLI students. "[20][m] A syndicated morning radio show named Fierceton its "donkey of the day". Is that just an interpretation or did they say anything that suggested to you that the fact that you had gone to a private school and grown up in an upper-middle-class situation meant that you could never at any point consider yourself low-income? So normally the term FGLI, its just an umbrella term for both. or in graduate school. 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. Fierceton told the story that, according to her diary, her mother had told her to tellthat she had tripped while playing with the family dogs and bruised herself on the corner of a nearby table. The court had ordered Fierceton and Morrison into family therapy, but the former was too afraid of the latter to do it. 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. RG: And so when you applied for your masters in social worker or sociology? 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? Right. She petitioned the court, and was able to successfully have her name removed, with a judge ruling that there wasnt enough evidence to substantiate the abuse allegations specifically, saying, While it is possible that Petitioner was the cause of the alleged injuries, the court cannot make that finding by a preponderance of the evidence based on the evidence presented.. MF: I mean, part of it is honestly like its looking at cause we just wanted to be as thorough as possible of when [laughs] I was crying, and then I was crying and taking breaths. So not that I think at all the population of kids who are in foster care is representative of what abuse or neglect and what households they occur or dont occur in. 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. 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