Two people contacted Penn initially. One was a parent, who identified himself. The other was anonymous and was later identified as a former classmate. Beyond that we donât know anything.
My point is that being who those informants were does not preclude either or both of them acting on behalf of the mother for the simple reason that the motherâs attorney is the father of a former classmate. And that former classmate/attorneyâs daughter is one of the classmates who has been described as turning against MF once the family dispute became public and people started choosing sides.
The whole reason that this is even in question is because Penn ran a kangaroo investigation in which they kept everything secret, including the identities of their âconfidential witnessesâ. We have no idea whom they interviewed. We donât know who said what to whom. We donât know who corroborated MFâs story and who didnât. We donât know what interviews were selectively included to support Pennâs narrative and which ones were excluded.
This is America. In a normal court proceeding, the accused is allowed to know who their accusers are and is allowed to confront them. Not in this case.
Not only did Penn conduct a secret investigation and withhold any contradictory evidence from this student, but in addition, they sidestepped their own normal procedures which are employed in cases where a student has violated the universityâs code of conduct. By doing so, MF was denied the right of appeal because the appeals officer did not have jurisdiction over cases following this unusual alternate route.
So no ability to confront accusers or even know who they are. (Witnesses considered credible by the universityâs investigation included MFâs accused abusers who had massive conflicts of interest.) No right of appeal. What country is this?
As @royalcroftmom said on April 4,
âPenn had sponsored her for the Rhodes; she was their candidate, and thus supported her application. This wasnât some award totally separate from Penn.â
As partner to the application, Penn had their own interest in this case. And itâs not like the applicant is their employee. If anything, the roles are reversed. Students hire universities to provide them with a service. By undertaking this investigation the way they did, Penn took on large conflicts of interest. They should have recused themselves and farmed the investigation out to a neutral third party. They further complicated things by their secrecy and denial of the normal right of appeals.
Your statement that âa classmate outed herâ assumes that she had something to be âoutedâ for. Penn had all of the information about her background from the time she applied. She has never denied that pedigree or any other part of her background. It was the Inquirer reporter who had erroneously described her as âhaving grown up poorâ and who irresponsibly never corrected that error. MF herself never claimed to have grown up poor. They knew that she had attended a fancy prep school for rich kids. Oxbridge had verified her FGLI status and stands behind the legitimacy of that application to this day. She was legitimately low income at the time of her application to Penn undergrad, at the time of her application to Pennâs SPP grad school, and at the time of her Rhodes application. She had been driven into poverty by her abusive mother and her motherâs abusive boyfriend. Pennâs own Admissionâs Office had initially classified her as first gen as is common practice in universityâs all over the country for students who had aged out of the foster care system as she had, according ti the NYer article.
If anyone was outed by the e-mails from her Whitfield School associates. Rather than replying to the e-mailers with âWe know all about that and sheâs fineâ as Oxbridge did when contacted about her application, Penn acted like a guilty party, like there was some wrongdoing to be covered up. I donât know anything about their internal conversations, but their actions certainly look like those of someone who has panicked. Hastily conducted investigation conducted in secret. Communicating with Rhodes about her application without notifying the applicant/award recipient for almost a month subsequent failing to follow their own normal internal procedures. Imposing a financial penalty in violation of their own charter. Smearing their own student in public statements. All very sloppy. It certainly appears to be Penn who felt like they were the ones being âoutedâ.