An interesting story on an Ivy League student and would-be Rhodes Scholar in The Chronicle of Higher Education

[Bill_Marsh]

@roycroftmom

It wasn’t a disciplinary action in the beginning ( not brought by a member of the university, not a formal action), it was merely an investigation carried out by the dean/counsel. Eventually, that resulted in a disciplinary action, likely brought upon the complaint of the dean, against MF. I did not see anything stating she sought and was denied access to an advisor during the disciplinary action.

Penn’s obligation to inform the Rhodes trust would be contained in the agreement between Penn as a nominating institution and the Trust. Routine. Given that that whistle-blower separately informed the Trust directly, not sure this matters much in any event.

MF’s lawyer is grasping at straws, but that is his job.

Thank you for your explanation.

You have stated Penn’s position that it was not a disciplinary action. MF’s side contests that. Whether or not the university’s position is actually the fact is one of the issues to be decided by this litigation.

I find the characterization of the anonymous emailer as a “whistle-blower” interesting. I believe that this characterization began with the report from the Rhodes Trust where it is stated as such. Any definition of whistle-blower which I’ve ever seen has to do with employees reporting irregularities by their employers. Because if the unequal power dynamic in these relationships, such whistle-blowers are given legal protections. However, I’ve never heard of anonymous emailers having such protections. The Rhodes Trust report in fact refers to “extensive evidence gathered from confidential whistleblowers”. They insinuate by use of the term “confidential whistleblower” that their sources somehow have protected status. They and Penn used this inference to hide their sources from MF. I’m not aware of protected status applying to anonymous emailer(s).

Although the anonymous emailer(s) did directly contact the Rhodes Trust, this was done almost a month after the original e-mail to UPenn and only after Penn had already notified Rhodes. We have no way knowing if the emailer(s) did this on his/her own initiative or at the behest of UPenn. The timing and the delay is certainly suspicious.

You say that it would be routine for Rhodes to require nominating institutions to update Rhodes of any additional developments and that this would be in a separate document. MF’s lawyer is alleging tortious interference. You are making Penn’s defense. If this is the case, the separate documents will come out in court. So we’ll have to wait and see.

[Bill_Marsh]

@twoinanddone

@Bill_Marsh

Mackenzie’s last name was Terrell at birth. Later she was referred to by the last name of Morrison, her mother’s last name. I wonder how that happened. There would seem to be a backstory there.

Lots of parents change the name of their children after a divorce, or just start using the mother’s name. It may not be official, but it happens. I used to do name changes as a magistrate. The mother would file, I’d issue the name change order, the father would object and have the name changed back. Lots of fun.

It doesn’t sound like this was an amicable divorce and that they might have fought over all kinds of things, including the last name.

My niece and nephew have my sister’s name as their middle names. Sometimes it is assumed that they have a hyphenated last name, but it isn’t. I’ve seen them listed under the G name (sisters) or under the B name (father). They use what’s convenient for the situation.

Yes, I’ve seen the same in my work in schools. When parents just began using their new name as the child’s name without a legal change, we insisted on using the child’s birth name unless and until there was a legal name change. If in fact the mother arbitrarily changed the child’s birth/legal name it creates an interesting backdrop to this student’s later self-initiated name change. Such actions by a parent are confusing to the child. I’ve seen this first hand. There is nothing more personal than one’s own name. If this was the case, it would say something about how this might operated. Actions have conseqnces.

[Bill_Marsh]

@Mumfromca

This girl is extraordinally gifted for good and for bad: charming, convincing, academically brilliant as well as deceptive and conniving. think it is part genetics (her father was described as a pathological liar in the doc) and part nurture (grew up with physical abuse by the father and with either a submissive or abusing mother, depending who you believe).

I think that this is a stretch. Billy Terrell, he father, was alleged to be a pathological liar in a divorce dispute.

All kinds of allegations are made in divorce disputes. They are often false or at best an exaggeration. Sometimes they mean that the person making the allegation is a pathological liar. This characterization of him as such can hardly be treated as fact.

As for MacKenzie herself being genetically predisposed to being a pathological liar, I’m not aware of any research identifying pathological lying as a genetically inherited trait. If you do, please share.

It’s also interesting that the father was identified as the suspected abuser. However, since this was only a suspicion with therefore no confirming evidence (I would assume), it’s interesting that MacKenzie herself identifies the mother as the abuser and directs her anger toward her.

[Peterell]

I find this story fascinating, but i find so many of the posts on this thread deeply disturbing. The assumptive and vindictive nature of some of the posts is indicative far more of the nature of the poster than of the nuances of the story. The need to blame and create an “other” seems indicative of being on a team and being right, rather than trying to understand what is clearly a fraught and murky series of events. Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, the need, by some, to publicly tear apart the character of someone they don’t know and have scant “facts” about, is truly disturbing. There is clearly more that will be revealed in this sad story. Perhaps folks on this blog can discuss those revelations with a desire to understand their fellow humans on all sides, rather than judge and condemn them. Life is full of nuance and conflicting truths and multiple motivations. People’s lives and livelihoods and careers hang in the balance. Let’s try to live generous lives and not pretend we “know” more than we know. We have Facebook for that.

[BornMe]

You’ve been able to express what I want to say, so much better than I could. I had written and deleted so many posts here, and in the end just decided to stop looking at this thread, which I now will continue to do!

[1NJParent]

@Peterell

Life is full of nuance and conflicting truths and multiple motivations.

How does anyone, other than the ones who are directly involved, know the full truth and all the nuances (even in a judicial case)? But falsehoods can be shown and proven, can they not? How can anyone be certain of someone else’s motivation? But does that mean no one can reasonably deduce who has the most probable motive and who has little or no motivation?

[Catcherinthetoast]

@BornMe

Considering this all occurred because Fiercton investigated, and would be a witness for a liability case against the University, the employees of Penn have stupidly weakened their first case and also created a new one. I suspect that the badgering Winklestein (?) will be let go, or at least I hope so. Maybe they will stop having classes in the basement as well. Poor girl!

It strikes me as ironic that you posted this at the very start of the thread only to now join in and criticize others for drawing conclusions based on scant and murky facts and lacking nuance.

[roycroftmom]

I find it far more disturbing that some posters wish to excuse the fraud that occurred, and indeed expected Penn to ignore and cover-up the fraud once it had been alerted to it. There is nothing ethical in this woman’s behavior, regardless of any past trauma she had endured. Our failure to agree on that depresses me; if we can’t agree on the most basic rules of proper conduct, we really are in trouble.

[roycroftmom]

The dictionary definition of whistle-blower: " one who informs on a person or organization engaged in illicit activity."

The failure to use the common and usual definitions is one of the problems.

[itsgettingreal21]

I have to agree with you here. That people are defending her behavior is quite sad.

My DD was a Rhodes finalist, was very honest in her app, and did not ultimately win. In fact, instead of a sob story, she wrote partly about her privileged upbringing. She felt that the two winners out of her district were very deserving. To find out that the one of the chosen winners was a liar would have been very upsetting, to say the least. Having gone through the process with my DD, the fact that MF thought she needed a sob story to win when most finalists and winners are very privileged makes me very unsympathetic. She would have won without the lies.

Rhodes does do some (probably not very extensive) fact checking. My DD was asked during the interview weekend questions about things not included in her application. But due to MF’s name changes, I can see how that was difficult here.

[DadOfJerseyGirl]

@roycroftmom

if we can’t agree on the most basic rules of proper conduct, we really are in trouble.

It appears that MF’s defenders/sympathizers assume that the following two points cannot simultaneously be true:
A. That she may have been abused by her mother and entered foster care during her junior year and become low income at that point.
B. That she fraudulently misrepresented herself as always having grown up in poverty, having had to take care of a disabled sibling, etc.

Or alternatively that if A is true then B is justifiable. Also amused that the FGLI definition of a student organization (which IMO is preposterous because they say you’re FG if your parents didn’t go to an “elite” institute) is being cited as Penn’s official definition of FG.

Anyway, this thread has run its course and no one is going to change their views. So this is likely my last word on the topic.

[merc81]

This from the Big Trial article appears to represent an oversimplification:

The feature story, essentially a puff piece, highlighted the 23 year-old Fierceton’s journey from foster child to Rhodes scholar, where she beat out more than 2,300 applicants from across the country.

I believe Rhodes still selects by state, in which case Fierceton likely would have been competing with other nominees with a connection to Missouri.

Also, for those with an interest in English usage, it would have been better for academia if the two professors in support of Fierceton had not misused “flaunt” in their complaint against Penn.

[hebegebe]

@itsgettingreal21

My DD was a Rhodes finalist, was very honest in her app, and did not ultimately win.

Congrats on that. Being selected as finalist is itself a huge honor.

[RookieCollegeMom]

@Bill_Marsh

“first in her family to pursue higher educationat an elite institution” or “have a strained or limited relationship with the person in your family who holds a bachelor’s degree

Side note - is this a normal definition of first gen? Seems odd to me.

I would be first gen, my kids would be first gen, and their kids would be first gen under this definition (my dad, and none of us went to an “elite institution”).

And you only have to have a “strained or limited relationship” with the person who hold the bachelor’s? How many kids have a parent who they don’t have contact with but are required to include their financial info on the FAFSA, etc?

And how many teens have a strained relationship with their parents? (Ok, I am being snarky on that point )

Another note - it specifically says “bachelor’s degree”. If her mother is a radiologist, she certainly has higher than a bachelor’s.

[Twoin18]

It was interesting to read Rob Henderson’s comments on this (he is a kid who was in foster care from an early age and is now a Gates Cambridge scholar) in his newsletter (https://www.robkhenderson.com/):

“My blood boiled when I read that in her Rhodes statement, describing the turmoil of herself and her foster siblings, Fierceton wrote, “Why does this keep happening to us?” Us ?

As someone who never knew my father and grew up in foster homes after my mother succumbed to a drug addiction, I couldn’t imagine myself or my foster siblings putting Fierceton in the same category as ourselves.

And even if she did not embellish her backstory, she had plenty of reason to. Elite universities incentivize victimhood.
…
In my first year at Yale, I spoke with a fourth year student who told me he had grown up poor, and that his dad was a construction worker. Months later, he revealed to me that his father in fact owned a construction company, and that he’d grown up in a nice house in Scarsdale.

I asked him why he told me he’d been poor. He replied, “Because it makes a better story.”
…
Beyond gaming college admissions, there is also widespread dishonesty in the universities themselves, perhaps because they select for deceitful students.

As an undergraduate at Yale in 2018, I knew of students falsely claiming to have dyslexia in order to bypass the foreign language requirement. This is consistent with a 2018 report, indicating a sharp uptick in special accommodations for students with learning disabilities.

Cheating was widespread on campus. When I had to take military examinations for promotion, before we began, a proctor collected everyone’s phones. In college, students would go to the bathroom in the middle of a midterm and scroll their phones to check their notes. In 2019, the year after I graduated, the Yale Daily News found that 14 percent of students admitted to academic dishonesty. In 2021, the number doubled to 28 percent. Another 2015 survey at Harvard found that 1 in 4 of their first year students acknowledge cheating prior to matriculation.

Plainly, duplicity is pervasive at elite colleges, which champion moral rectitude while incentivizing dishonesty. And now it seems that people want Fierceton to be a scapegoat—someone to condemn for doing what her peers are doing, and have been doing for years.
…
As elite colleges attempt to admit more students with underprivileged backgrounds, they also create incentives for applicants from well-to-do families to accentuate their supposedly marginalized identities. Rather than incentivizing victimhood, these institutions should direct their attention to reconfiguring the pervasive, deceitful culture they have cultivated.”

[Publisher]

I agree, but I also understand both perspectives–just not the harsh emotion that seem to motivate the posts against the young lady.

I am most troubled by the fact of the lengthy hospitalization of over 3 weeks after a fall down stairs. The mother claims that the fall & injuries were the result of an accidental fall while the mother was removing gum from her daughter’s hair. The daughter stated that the mother pushed her down the stairs.

I am a bit troubled by the fact that the young lady changed her name as such a move makes reinventing oneself easier. After reading that the young lady’s last name was changed once before after the divorce, my concern is lessened a bit as the young lady may have learned that step as a way to escape from one’s past & to take on a new identity.

Regardless of the exaggerations & embellishments, the daughter suffered real injuries due to falling or being pushed down stairs while being cared for / in physical contact with the mother. The mother did not seek medical care for the daughter. The daughter passed out at school the next day–if I recall correctly from the writing referenced in this thread–and a hospital nurse stated that she washed blood out of the young lady’s hair.

[Publisher]

If I may summarize my understanding of your point:

Students have learned that certain behavior is rewarded.

[RookieCollegeMom]

@BWM

Unfortunately, there is a temptation to embellish in the current college admissions landscape.

Doesn’t make it right. You can be sure my kids did not embellish on college apps, resumes, etc.

[Bill_Marsh]

I thought I made it clear that I was referring to Rhodes reference to “confidential whistleblower”, which is a dog whistle for those covered by the whistleblower protection act. Anonymous emailers enjoy no such protections.

[roycroftmom]

A “dog whistle”?? Seriously, no idea what you are taking about. The Rhodes Trust used standard American written English in its report. As expected. Normal definitions, proper grammar. You may not like the conclusions, but criticizing the report as written?