? This is from the article in the OP. The second to last sentence posted said “The report recommended rescinding her scholarship”.
To me that sounds like the report and Rhodes Trust reached a determination, but didn’t have to apply the consequences because the student withdrew from the program.
Thanks. The OP article is locked, so I was relying on the other one.
I disagree that a committee report indicates that the Trust reached a determination. They are 2 different levels of decision making. The Trust might have accepted the committee’s recommendation and followed it, but they might not have.
Sure, the Trust might not have followed their committee findings.
The committee did conclude Fierceton ‘created and repeatedly shared false narratives about herself’ and that her ‘misrepresentations also served her interests as an applicant for competitive programs’.
That doesn’t seem like Rhodes Scholar behavior.
I have never heard of the Warden of Rhodes house not following the recommendations of its committees
Ironically, I think she would have had a pretty good chance at admission to Penn (tho not the Rhodes) had she been honest about her background as a relatively privileged doctor’s daughter until she was 17, when it all fell apart and she entered the foster system.
We don’t even know what was going on before she was taken from her mother, so perhaps that was worse than being a foster child.
Just because she came from a wealthy background does not negate the fact that her family was troubled enough for her to end up having contact with children’s welfare agencies when young, later end up hospitalized, then ultimately in foster care with presumably no wealth by the time she graduated high school. The broad brush facts of her background are true in that respect, although the details of her contacts and hospitalization may have been exaggerated in her essay. If Penn starts booting students based on finding embellishment of descriptive details in application essays, I am guessing they would whittle their class down considerably.
I was more troubled by her presenting as first-generation college, which seemed like an outright falsehood. Then I read how loosely Penn defines that — if true, nearly anyone whose parents did not go to an Ivy is first-gen. So that troubled me, too.
I was prepared to see this as a lying-student-gets-what-she-deserves story, but ended up a lot more skeptical of the university’s actions here. I still see plenty to criticize in her behavior, but she suspiciously doesn’t seem as bad as Penn wants to make her out to be.
She certainly was able to collect character witnesses to support her side. Her foster family and faculty both gave her a place to live after she had aged out of the foster system. And she managed to succeed academically despite the turmoil in her personal life.
If she is calculating and manipulative, she is certainly playing the long game and doing it really well.
I read the judge’s statement referenced in the article noting that her hospitalization length did not seem to be consistent with her physical injuries, and the other reference to a feeding tube being inserted for " behavioral" reasons, as perhaps to pointing to undisclosed psychological issues.
I personally would not charaterize her statements as embellishment as much as outright lies.
I was surprised that by 23 she did not think her story would catch up with her. Being featured in a major newspaper can expose background.
What a boondoggle to unravel.
Peyton Place, As the World Turns, General Hospital etc cannot come close to holding a candle to this mess.
My guess is the answer lies somewhere in the middle, and the mom and daughter might share some personality traits that tend toward manipulative.
We actually do know some. The article said that the police and children’s services had been involved many years before.
If she has had a psych admit during that hospitalization, I am confident that her mother would have disclosed it to the investigative journalist or the journalist would have found it another way.
Very unusual demographic to go into foster system. One can usually locate the ex spouse or some other relative or family friend willing to take the teen for a while. In any event, I expect we will never know the full story.
The article that I noted in my first post in this thread stated that UPenn threatened to take away the young woman’s undergraduate degree if she did not withdraw from the Rhodes Scholarship program.
Spending time in a hospital for injuries inflicted by one’s parent, then being placed in to foster care is convincing enough to me. Parental abuse–whether physical, psychological, or both–will result in harm to a young dependent child.
I don’t think anyone doubts that she had harm occur. Is that supposed to justify a fraudulent grad school/scholarship application years later?. Penn has an obligation to the Rhodes committee to present applicants truthfully-when they discovered doubt about whether they had done that, they alerted the Rhodes trust and did their own inquiry. Are you saying they should have ignored it?
I am not convinced of any fraud committed by the young woman.
What do you find to be obviously fraudulent? By Penn’s definition, she was first gen. She was in foster care and had a documented history of police/CPS involvement before. She was a Pell Grant recipient because neither he parents of birth nor her foster family was funding her education.
Fair enough, but the Rhodes and college disagree with you. The article stated that the Rhodes committee felt she misrepresented herself as “first generation, low income her whole life, and grew up in the foster care system.” There is no indication the Rhodes committee uses an expansive definition of first gen to include estranged children of doctors, her household was certainly not low income for her first 17 years, and she did not grow up in the foster care system if she spent less than a year in it at age 17.
I work with foster care kids to help them get admitted to elite colleges. They are some of the strongest, most resilient and heart-wrenching kids you will ever meet. I do not think they would regard this woman as a peer in any way. Her story is sad, but doesn’t begin to represent the obstacles of those who actually do grow up in the foster system.
How much of the Rhodes recommendation was influenced by Penn’s investigation, which appears to me to be self-serving of their institutional interests?
Rhodes did their own investigation. Penn would greatly have preferred the whole incident had never occurred, I am sure. They do not gain by these disclosures.
The UPenn website, at least today, states the usual definition of first gen, that is, first in family to attend college.