She was hospitalized twice in 2014 due to injuries she says were inflicted by her mother. "She lies better than I can tell the truth. I n November 2020, University of Pennsylvania graduate student Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, won the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. [2][e], A spokesman for the D.A. [2], A week later, Fierceton received an email asking her to attend a meeting over Zoom with Winkelstein. White, who had apparently drafted the offer, added a sentence to it requiring Fierceton to say she was agreeing to it "voluntarily and without pressure" after she learned that Fierceton was complaining to professors that she felt Penn was pressuring her to do this. "[2], When Fierceton returned to the St. Louis area on vacations and breaks, she stayed with friends. [23] In mid-April, Penn released Fierceton's master's degree. Mackenzie spent her youth in the foster care system and wrote her capstone thesis for the University of Pennsylvania's Civic Scholars Program on the foster-to-prison pipeline. Her supporters at Penn have called for the university's acting provost, Beth Winkelstein, to be held accountable for her role in the investigation, characterizing it as a continuation of her abuse. [f] Fierceton felt no ambivalence about her answer. [2], Fierceton remained in the hospital, where DSS ordered her placed in protective custody. Morrison told White in an email. [2] Her father, Billy Terrell,[1] had been an actor in soap operas. Penn's report notes that Fierceton disputes this account. She helped SP2 assistant professor Toorjo Ghose draft and promote a petition in support of Police Free Penn, an activist group calling on the university to cut its ties with the Philadelphia Police Department over its poor relations with the largely black and Latin residents of the West Philadelphia neighborhoods around the university's campus, and rethink its own police department, the largest private one in the state. Fierceton finished her Whitfield education on a scholarship while living in foster homes. 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". [2], During her high school years, Fierceton has alleged that her mother subjected her to emotional and physical abuse, the latter enough on more than one occasion to require hospitalization. "[2], In December, an anonymous 22-page letter was sent to the U.S. office of the Rhodes Trust, which administers the scholarship program. Dismissal of mother's charges and expurgation of records, Role in wrongful death suit against university, In its response to Fierceton's suit, Penn quotes Fierceton as telling police as soon as they entered her hospital room after her later injury about her diary and that it would tell them everything they would need to know. 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. A trial was held in early 2019 at which she, Fierceton, a psychologist and a DSS investigator testified. It's a hard scholarship to win, but Fierceton . [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. "They are the people that support you, look out for you, & love you unconditionally. 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. Despite the fact that she graduated with a Master's degree from Pennsylvania, the university opted to withhold her diploma due to poor disciplinary actions and . "While it is possible that [she] was the cause of the alleged injuries," she wrote a month afterward, "the court cannot make that finding by a preponderance of the evidence based on the evidence presented." Fierceton responded that that showed the university's "vulnerability and desperation". Fierceton was released after four days. Attached were copies of the Missouri court orders expunging Morrison's arrest and removing her name from the DSS registry. Seeing other students consult their parents for minor decisions made her feel left out; she avoided telling people she had been in foster care before college. [2][5] It did not disclose that it had done so until March. "[25], "I cannot avoid the sense that Mackenzie is being faulted for not having suffered enough", Norton told The New Yorker. Detective Carrie Brandt, who had been planning to follow up on the hotline report at Whitfield that day, instead interviewed Fierceton at the hospital. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of. [2], At the beginning of April,[5] after she came to school with a black eye that showed through the concealer she put over it, she was taken to see the wellness director, who asked what had happened. She found Fierceton's diary at the house and read it, then interviewed teachers and administrators at Whitfield, learning of Morrison's insulting texts to Fierceton. [5] She posted it before Fierceton's release from the hospital, and once free began calling Fierceton's friends and former teachers, telling them that Fierceton was having issues and had made it appear Morrison had beaten her. Fierceton, 23, competed against 2,300 applicants and in the end, was one of 32 scholars who were selected in November of 2020 to study at Oxford. After her graduation summa cum laude, political science professor Anne Norton invited Fierceton to stay with her and her partner in their large house in Northwest Philadelphia for as long as she needed to in order to complete her master's over the next year. [3], Before that happened, Fierceton withdrew from the scholarship on her own. Moreover, she has kept some of the media on her side. A woman who won a coveted scholarship in the US to study at Oxford after claiming she was poor, overcame childhood abuse and grew up in foster care lost the opportunity after it emerged she was middle-class and went to a $30,000-a-year private school. ", Morrison said. Last month my social media feeds were flooded with the tale of Mackenzie Fierceton, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who lost her Rhodes scholarship to Oxford after allegations she had misrepresented her background. ", When Penn's Office of Student Conduct confronted Fierceton with the discrepancy between her statement on two of her applications that she ", The exact definition of FGLI relevant to forms Fierceton filled out is a key point in the Rhodes Trust and Penn investigations of her. She also alleged that Penn had on many occasions failed to follow its own disciplinary policies in its investigation of her.[16]. It called attention to claims, such as the one in her application essay, that by the time she was six she "knew every police officer in my county by their first name", a claim Fierceton herself admitted was untrue and born of her fear of her biological family when she wrote it. [2], "Family is not the people you are related to by blood," she wrote in the diary. Mackenzie Fierceton recalled in her diary an allegedly sickening incident that happened a year prior that involved Lovelace. Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, claimed she was from a poor background and grew up in foster care when she actually attended private school By Phoebe Southworth 13 January 2022 8:00pm Mackenzie. Fierceton was born August 9, 1997, under the name Mackenzie Terrell, in Danbury, Connecticut,[1] to Carrie Morrison, a physician who would later head the breast imaging department at St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield, where the couple lived. [2], Fierceton shared the information she had with Logan, who in turn took it to a law firm that investigated further. Another local Rhodes Scholar is 21-year-old Jamal Burns, who went to Duke University after graduating from Gateway STEM High School in St. Louis. [2], The trust notified Fierceton at the beginning of 2021 that it was conducting an investigation into the allegations. 24-year-old Mackenzie Fierceton won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship last year to study at Oxford University, and now she's lost her place at the school after . Fierceton had apparently made much of her status as a 'first generation, low income' student, an abuse . . [1]:111112, In her Intercept interview, Grim recounts how this was reported in The New Yorker and asks "So how is a person who is filling out this application supposed to know what definition youre supposed to use?" She will be joining a distinguished group of students. [1], Shortly after Penn filed its response, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the story. This page is not available in other languages. was truthful, Rafaelle feared that Penn might share its information with the government and if the U.S. Attorney decided to pursue a prosecution, it would be likely to last a long time and consume much of her attention. She was one of only 32 U.S. college students to receive a four-year scholarship for graduate studies at the University of Oxford in England. She was an Ivy League student with an inspiring story. 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?" [2], Later that year, after that first foster home turned out to be "chaotic", with Fierceton's foster sibling attempting suicide, she moved to another one. "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? Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, had her Rhodes scholarship rescinded last year after a source told the Trust she was not 'low income' or a 'first generation' student Fierceton, who was born. [2], Brandt interviewed Morrison, who described herself and her daughter as "two peas in a pod". Mackenzie Fierceton grew up in a middle-class suburb of St. Louis. Philadelphia, PA. Pennsylvania : Lafayette College : Victoria Puglia : Wassenaar, Netherlands . When they did, they were unable to get stretchers or backboards down Caster's stairways or elevators as there was insufficient space. Although she had not attended an orientation session for first-generation/low-income (FGLI) students she had been invited to, on campus she began attending meetings and gatherings of Penn First, an FGLI student group founded the preceding year to pressure Penn to better accommodate their needs, such as not closing dormitories and cafeterias over breaks since many FGLI students could not, for various reasons, return home during those periods. In November 2020, when University of Pennsylvania graduate student Mackenzie Fierceton won the prestigious and highly competitive Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford one of just 32 scholars selected from a pool of 2,300 applicants she was praised by the Ivy League school's president in a newsletter. 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. [19] The New York Post wrote that "[t]he case exposes the murky underbelly of elite schools like Penn. Mackenzie Fierceton, 24,. The story is about Mackenzie Fierceton, a St. Louis teenager. Mackenzie Fierceton described herself as s a "queer,. 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. Fierceton was living off-campus by then, but she and her roommates decided to leave their apartment. Despite losing funding from the Rhodes Scholarship, a Penn professor paid for her . ", "Inside Mackenzie Fierceton's ongoing legal battle with the University", "Mackenzie Fierceton Sets the Record Straight on Losing a Rhodes Scholarship Over Accusations of 'Dishonesty', "Penn community rallies in support of former Rhodes Scholar Mackenzie Fierceton", "Universities must stop fetishizing trauma", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mackenzie_Fierceton&oldid=1144986758, controversy over representation of childhood and abuse, This page was last edited on 16 March 2023, at 16:53. Morrison was arrested and charged with felony child abuse and third-degree assault (a misdemeanor) in the incident that had led to Fierceton's hospitalization, and an additional felony child abuse count for the incident that had triggered the DSS caseworker's visit earlier in the year; the arrest warrant alleged that Morrison had deliberately slammed her daughter's head into the table. She and a separate witness said records of child-welfare agencies from years earlier are not easy to obtain. A week later, Brandt interviewed Morrison again at the police station; this time she said that her daughter had injured herself, saying "I guess she has more problems than I thought." 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. 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. Mackenzie Fierceton: The Problem with Elite Colleges, The Victimhood Industrial Complex, & Privilege . In 2020, Fierceton applied for a Rhodes scholarship and was one of 32 students nationwide to win the prestigious award. "[4][2], Winkelstein followed up with a letter to Elizabeth Kiss, the trust's CEO, alerting her that the university had been investigating Fierceton's story, found it to have seriously diverged from the reality of her life, with the abuse allegations quite possibly fabricated. By those standards, the standards of real family, not one person I'm related to by blood meets those requirements or even comes close." [2] Morrison's bond was originally set at $40,000, but lowered to $5,000 over prosecutors' strenuous objections. Mackenzie Fierceton has lost her Rhodes Scholarship and her University of Pennsylvania master's degree is being held after an anonymous tipster called out alleged inaccuracies in her school. The stunning colours and quality of light of the Provence-Alpes-Cte d'Azur region have seduced the globe's greatest artists for many generations, fostering a fertile hub of. The court had ordered Fierceton and Morrison into family therapy, but the former was too afraid of the latter to do it. Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, describes herself as a 'queer, first generation, low income' student at The University of Pennsylvania, was given a scholarship to go to Oxford this year after. Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, describes herself as a 'queer, first generation, low income' student at The University of Pennsylvania. She was abused, but there is not enough blood." [2][4], After she had recovered from her seizure incident earlier that year, fellow students told her how difficult it had been for first responders to get to the basement of Caster Hall, where SP2 is based and holds most of its classes, and how difficult it had been to get her out. [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. They would not do so, however, if she agreed to withdraw from the scholarship, surrender the Latin honors that had accompanied her degree, and take a mandatory leave for "counseling and support" before receiving her master's. 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. In 2020, she was given a scholarship to go to Oxford after dazzling the Rhodes Trust with her story of how she overcame welfare, an abusive mother and the foster care system. Mackenzie Fierceton (born Mackenzie Terrell on August 9, 1997; later Mackenzie Morrison,[1]:6364,86) is an American activist and graduate student currently studying at Oxford University. "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. "[2][j], The evening the story ran, Ruderman called Fierceton back and told her she had received some anonymously written emails casting doubt on what she had written. "How much does one have to suffer to have value? Two senior Penn administrators have been asked to testify in Penn graduate Mackenzie Fierceton's lawsuit against the University. In April, the trust's investigative committee produced a 15-page report praising Fierceton as "gifted, driven, and charismatic" but concluding ultimately that she "created and repeatedly shared false narratives about herself", noting in particular her references to injuries she was treated for in her September 2014 hospital stay that are not reflected in her medical records. Another program official that year recalls Fierceton as seeming more vulnerable than she let on; after picking her up from the hospital following bone surgery that year, she noticed that Fierceton had a very light winter coat and few other possessions. In an article highly sympathetic to Fierceton published Friday, the Chronicle of. "[2], That feeling was not mutual, Fierceton came to suspect. Mackenzie Fierceton, of St. Louis County, lost out on what is known as the most prestigious international scholarship program, after claims that she lied on her application about being a "first-generation low-income student." . Fierceton, a 23-year-old University of Pennsylvania student, beat out more than 2,300 applicants from across the country to win the highly competitive and prestigious award, according to the Rhodes Trust. [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.