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

Parents Forum
423

Yes. And media reports are incomplete at best, and often biased.

Since none of us have access to the full court documents, none of us can be certain. @Bill_Marsh , the reports I read expressly stated the charges against the mother were dropped as improperly filed based upon false information, not insufficient evidence. That is quite a difference.

An adult made claims on a scholarship application, and administrators and the scholarship committee interviewed other adults to attempt to substantiate or refute those claims. That is the very minimum of due diligence, and something conducted frequently by employers, for example. If one doesn’t want one’s assertions checked, one should omit them from an application, or at the very least be scrupulous in providing their accuracy and context.

Whether the woman was abused or not isn’t really the issue. Whether her application and related interviews met the standards of honesty expected of applicants was the test, and one which she failed.

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I think the one thing we can guarantee is that future scholarship applicants at all schools will be required to document every element of their application to both the schools and the Rhodes/ Marshall, etc committees, who will be much more wary in the future

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What I read was that the charges were dropped due to new evidence, but the new evidence was not publicly disclosed, making it impossible to evaluate that decision making process.

I understand the criticisms of the student. My focus is on the conduct of the institutions. The Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, made a major error in reporting that MF grew up poor. The student never claimed that. That error was a mistake by the reporter. The Inquirer never corrected that factual error.

Penn’s handling of this case also invoked their own errors and irregularities. Most blatantly, they imposed a $4000 fine which was in violation of their own charter. A second example is the investigation by Penn’s Office of Student Conduct. After a 3 month investigation, they referred their single finding to the School of Social Policy Practice rather than following their usual practice of filing a formal charge against the student for a violation of their Code of Academic Integrity. As a result, the case was handled by a committee appointed by the SPP Dean. By sidestepping their normal procedures, the university’s Disciplinary Appellate Officer had no jurisdiction to review the committee’s hearing or results, leaving the student no recourse for appeal. This failure to follow their own established procedures prompted a grievance to be filed by multiple Penn faculty.

The Inquirer did report accurately and did not correct a major error when it was exposed. They failed basic standards of journalism.

The university did not follow its own charter and established procedures. Their flawed investigation therefore was never reviewed and contradictory evidence was never considered. The university failed to meet its own standards and has internal charges filed against its administrators responsible by members of its own faculty.

The student’s alleged failures aren’t the only issue here. The failures of the institutions involved are also at issue and are now being held up to public scrutiny.

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I agree the newspaper reporter inaccurately described her as having grown up poor. I wonder what led the reporter to state that. Presumably something in their interview led the reporter to that conclusion, but it obviously should have been checked. I wonder if the reporter felt she too had been misled.

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No. It’s been reported that she simply assumed that based on the student’s FGLI student. She admitted that the student never said that she had grown up poor.

Your speculation that it might have been something that the student said in the interview that may have misled her ignores other possibilities. The original “Pillow Talk” article reported that the editor who assigned the article to this reporter and who oversaw her work is married to the Penn public information officer who was handling the PR for the Rhodes Scholarship. That article speculates that it was conversations between husband and wife that influenced the editor’s handling of this case. Perhaps he encouraged the reporter to hype the article for Penn’s benefit to help his wife.

It might be considered reasonable that the reporter inferred from the student’s FGLI status and her description of her foster home experiences that the student grew up poor. However, the NYer article that it’s common practice at universities across the country to classify students who age out of the foster care system as first gen. The reporter by her own admission made assumptions. Those assumptions are a result of the fact that she didn’t do her homework.

Regardless of whether your speculation or that of the Pillow Talk journalists has merit, the Inquirer has the responsibility to live up to journalistic standards. In this case it failed to do so.

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Yes, it was the newspaper’s job to do so, and it failed.

429

This is the statement by the judge after the trial, stating his conclusions:

“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.”

This was his statement as quoted in the NYer article.

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“She later had her record expunged, with a judge writing her arrest was based upon false information”
Per media reports as well. As I said, neither of us have the entire file.
The spokesman for the prosecutor, Ed McGee, publicly stated all charges were dropped “after discovering new evidence”

431

I think Post 413 is an excellent summary of why Penn’s behavior is so troubling. I’ll add just a couple more items that were in the piece in the Daily Pennsylvanian which is linked in Post 390.
The authors of that piece interviewed Professor Anne Norton, who was Fierceton’s recommender for the Rhodes scholarship.

Norton revealed that she had read the letter Winkelstein sent to the Rhodes Trust expressing her concern that Fierceton falsely characterized herself as a first-generation, low-income student: “It was immediately evident to me that Winkelstein had made false charges. Winkelstein said Fierceton had misrepresented herself to her recommenders. I am a recommender, and I knew that was untrue. It is unacceptable for an administrator to bring false charges against a student, or fail to check her facts.”

They also note how unprecedented it was for Penn General Counsel White to engage in ongoing contact with a parent. Penn’s practice, like that of other colleges, is not to engage in contact with an adult student’s parents, and this is particularly true when the student comes to the school out of foster care.

Furthermore, it is unfathomable to us that White contacted and maintained contact with Fierceton’s abuser, but never spoke to Fierceton herself, according to Norton. The mere existence of this line of communication is both bizarre and unusual — especially given the fact that Fierceton was in foster care at the time of her enrollment at Penn. University officials rarely, if ever, communicate with parents of students, especially when the parent in question has no relationship with the student, legal or otherwise.

Is the mom the original source who contacted Penn, or don’t we know? It certainly sounds that way but I wasn’t clear on that. That seems so vindictive to me that it makes me more inclined to believe the mom is the liar and abuser.

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I believe classmates were identified as the original source for the lead. Several had provided substantial support to the student, including letting her stay with them, and were not happy with the Philly article.

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I continue to find it disheartening the contortions some people go to to find the mother’s version of events the more credible one. In order to believe the mother’s version of event, you have to believe:

– That Mackenzie self-harmed herself over a several year period to the extent that others around her questioned possible abuse but that she demurred with the classic abusee excuses of a series of unfortunate accidents.

– That her mother observed this self-harm but instead of seeking help backed up her daughter’s stories of a series of unfortunate accidents.

(-- Alternatively, that by some incredible odds she really did have a series of accidents that mimicked classic abuse injuries but later recast them as abuse.)

– That she developed a journal detailing her abuse over a seemingly multi-year period all with the long con in mind, or alternative that she was practiced in a convincing forgery developed later.

– That she eventually self-harmed herself so badly that she required hospitalization and a feeding tube. And that by coincidence her mother had “accidentally” pushed her down the stairs but that Mackenzie subsequently did something to hurt herself further to require hospitalization and claimed the push was worse and intentional.

– That the mother’s boyfriend coincidentally already had multiple criminal complaints against him by other women when Mackenzie accused him of sexual molestation.

– That the totally innocent mother (somehow manipulated despite Mackenzie not being present at the time) responded to a police detective when told of her daughter’s statement about her boyfriend sexually touching her in bed by, according to the police report at the time, laughing and saying it was flattering that her boyfriend accidentally mistook her 15 year-old daughter for her. That this is somehow a normal response for a caring, concerned mother. She didn’t question or deny that it had happened – she simply said it was yet another accident (a lot of those according to the mother).

– That Mackenzie was willing to be shuffled around in foster care all for her master plan or conning herself into Penn and casting aspersions on her mother who in actually was not doing anything wrong.

– That Mackenzie’s teachers, child protective service agents, the police detective and others who had direct interaction with both Mackenzie and her mother were all wrong and both conned by Mackenzie and/or thrown off by the mother’s bizarre responses and behavior.

– That the caring, unfairly maligned mother was just being caring when she affirmatively pursued trying to get Mackenzie’s scholarship revoked.

“But a judge said
” as if that’s the final word, not just legally, but in public opinion. Because judges are never wrong or biased apparently. Everyone else is, apparently, but not them. None of us were there. None of us know what happened. There is no legal consequence in what we believe, this isn’t a court of law. But it is interesting how vehemently some chose to believe the above over the possibility that she was abused.

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Yes, I tend to believe an objective professional expert opinion by a judge and public prosecutor over those with a personal interest in or relationship to the disputing parties. But as I mentioned, the veracity of the abuse, if any, wasnt the basis for the decisions by either Penn or the Rhodes committee. The veracity of the application was.

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That in itself is a subjective assumption. You are assigning them a vaulted status over people just as worthy of the presumption of credibility and expertise. But I get that this is your personal bias as we all have our own.

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Yes, that is how the judicial system works as a branch of government in the US. We have prosecutors who are supposed to represent the State’s interest and judges who are supposed to objectively decide disputed matters.
Not newspaper reporters, bystanders, or others with their own agendas.

437

The student is still free to pursue a civil case for damages against her mother-the statute of limitations was tolled while she was underage. Given the parent’s apparent wealth, and the lower burden of proof, I am surprised the student didn’t pursue that.

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You seem to forget that the professionals that were called upon to decide whether to press charges or let them stick, had access to everything that you mentioned. If what you wrote was actually true, it should have been a slam dunk to charge and sentence the mother for child abuse.

And yet, not only did they not sentence the mother, they went to the step of stating that they no longer found Mackenzie believable and expunging the charges against the mother.

I also want to mention something about bias. It is natural for people to believe the first person that they hear regarding a story. There is an evolutionary reason for this–if someone was running full speed by your ancestors and yelled out there was a lion chasing them, your ancestors were more likely to survive if they started running themselves instead of stopping and investigating if there was indeed a lion chasing after them. The act of believing the first person you hear is essentially built into our genes.

I bring this up because I am a professional investor, and one of the secrets to our success is that we take advantage of all the natural biases that people have that lead them to bad investment decisions. For example, it is common for companies to want their management teams to meet with investment firms to tout their strengths. Our policy is that we refuse to meet with all company professionals because doing so would bias us towards the companies we meet (we are a small firm and could not possibly meet every one of the thousands of companies we could invest in–if we were as large as Fidelity, the situation would be different). Only by not meeting anyone can we be objective towards all companies. We don’t want to hear their version of the story, but rather we will decide for ourselves what the story is.

When it comes to this situation, it is Mackenzie that is framing the discussion and the talking points in the public, and therefore it is expected that people, given their natural biases of believing the first person they hear, to side with her. For example, it is is completely expected that everyone at Penn would side with her.

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439

You’re quoting a reporter. I specifically quoted the judge’s final comment on the case a month after the trial had been completed.

The judge specifically said that “it is possible Petitioner caused the alleged injuries . . .” but “. . . The court cannot make that finding . . . based on the evidence presented.”

Clearly there was no new evidence that cleared the mother of the charges or the judge would not have said that is was still possible that she caused the evidence. Equally clear is that he could not make a finding due to lack of or insufficient evidence. The most anyone can say is that there was new evidence which caused doubt or undermined existing evidence.

440

A single former classmate was identified as the source for the anonymous report. In addition, a parent, who did identify himself, also contacted Penn. the very next person that Penn contacted was Carrie Morrison.

Because of Penn’s secrecy, which they claimed was necessary to protect the identity of “confidential informants” - a laughable assertion - we do not know who the father was who contacted Penn. However, it is worth noting that Carrie Morrison’s attorney was a father of another student in her same grade in high school. Unless Penn identifies who the father was who contacted them, it certainly leaves open the possibility that it was her mother’s attorney who contacted Penn, possibly on her behalf. That certainly seems likely in light of the fact that Penn avoided protocol of not contacting students’ parents and immediately spoke directly to the mother after speaking with that parent who contactEd them.

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Who cares who contacted Penn? There were inaccuracies in the article, someone pointed them out to Penn, which then had a duty to investigate, regardless of who pointed it out. Satan himself could have said there were inaccuracies-Penn had a duty to investigate, as Penn was her sponsor for the Rhodes. I would both hope and expect that they would always do so, particularly if they ever want to see another student get award in the future.

You are confusing 2 separate cases against Morrison, the mother. The criminal case ( State v Morrison) was 2 felony and one misdemeanor charge related to child abuse/injury. In that case, all charges dropped as based upon false information and record expunged.

The separate civil child abuse and permanency case, brought by MO social services to determine custody and support of the student, was the one dismissed for not meeting the evidentiary standard of preponderance of the evidence

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442

It is possible, and probably that two people saw or experienced the same event and have a different opinion of it. “she was hurt on the stairs” Mother says she fell, daughter says she was pushed. No one disputes she was hurt on the stairs, just what caused the fall. An observer might have testified that her mother grabbed her and that caused her to slip, or that the mother did push her but not toward the stairs, or a dozen other possibilities. People see things differently, and that’s why we do have trials.

The judge said the record was expunged because of a false report, but didn’t say WHO made (or wrote) that report. Maybe the social worker made the false report (or incorrect, or sloppy), or a police officer. It doesn’t say Makenzie’s version of the events was false or that she was lying. The reports were legally insufficient to bring charges.

In my experience (and I do work in this area), they are not trying to charge parents with abuse or criminal charges, and are not trying to remove children from the home. They do try to get a parent to admit to the civil neglect charges so that they can get a plan in place to get the child back in the home (if removed), set up therapies, get things stabilized so the child can return home. In this case, the parties may not have been willing to work toward that as it is unlikely a court would return a 16-17 year old to a home where she claimed she’d been sexually abused by a man her mother was living with. It just doesn’t happen. In my state, if the child(ren) are under 5, the plan is on an express track of 12 months; if over 5, it is 18 months. With teens, that return to the home sometimes doesn’t happen (although foster care can continue until age 23). It is not unusual for all court proceedings to be terminated without resolution.

It is unusual for court records to be expunged. Very unusual. Why? Most families (something like 80%) involved in the court for dependency and neglect are very low income and qualify for court appointed lawyers who do the main issues and nothing else. Getting things expunged costs money and is for rich people. This mother could afford to file the appropriate motions but most cannot.

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