Okay, Roycriftmom, I’ve registered and have read the Chronicle article as you suggested. A few things stand out to me.
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Ms. Fierceton identified herself as first gen, based on U Penn’s own definition of first gen, “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.” Duh. She qualifies as first gen in spades by both of these definitions. Penn accepted her self-identification as first gen without question when she applied as an undergrad. It seems reasonable that she would continue to identify herself as “first gen” when she was applying to grad school at that very same institution. It seems immaterial that she identified as first gen for grad school anyway, given that her credential were sterling and as a result would have had no difficulty being accepted whether she identified herself as first gen or not. Identifying herself as first gen for the Rhodes Scholarship is probably a continuation of the same practice, but by that time she should probably have known better and should have read the Rhodes definition rather than continuing with the Penn designation. But hardly the behaviour of someone who might be considered ‘canny” or devious as Penn and later the Rhodes subcommittee have claimed.
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Her diary represents contemporaneous documentation of the abuse from her mother, verifying that her later submissions to Penn and Rhodes are not post facto inventions but are rather reports of her circumstances as she understood them. Contemporaneous writings are generally accepted in court as evidence to verify other reports of events and state of mind. They should be given the same weight here.
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The Rhodes committee claims that it “reviewed extensive evidence gathered from confidential whistleblowers. What?! Talk about misrepresentation! Whistleblowers in both general parlance and in legal definitions are understood to be employees who report illegal or unethical practices of their employer. Their status is protected and confidentiality is provided because they can lose their job fir doing the right thing and because they are in a relationship in which the employer has all the power and they have none. None of that applies here. Ms. Fierceton has NO power in this situation. There are no whistleblowers here. And to identify her vindictive, self-serving mother or anyone else as such is frankly a blatant falsehood, a lie. And “confidential”?! Why? What happened to the right to defend oneself by confronting their accuser? The behaviour of both Penn and the Rhodes subcommittee in this situation appear to be highly unethical.
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The people who came to know Ms. Fierceton best at Penn are the 2 professors who have assisted her with her lawsuit and who in doing so have operated in ways that her contrary to their own self-interest. In a court of law so doing would be considered to enhance their credibility. They believe her implicitly. The other person who came to know her well was Nurse Sherry McClain, who cared for her and wiped the blood out of her hair at the hospital after the incident with her mother. McClain said that she found nothing untruthful in Ms. Fierceton’s report of the incident at the hospital and described her at that point as “a broken child.”
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Dr. Morrison, her mother, is clearly a sick woman. Who does this to their own daughter? Her behaviour is rife with conflicts of interest. Ms. Fierceton’s father is never mentioned. He seems to have abandoned her. Both have eschewed their financial responsibility to her by walking away from her college financing despite having the ability to pay for it.
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Upon completion of her master’s degree, Penn sent Ms. Fierceton an e-mail, congratulating her for meeting all of the requirements for her degree. But now they are withholding that same degree?! I know that they can get away with that, but how is that ethical? She completed all the requirements for the degree, but no degree. How dare they? No wonder she’s suing them.
My take on this is that the behaviour of the officials at Penn has been reprehensible. They ignored their own policies and definitions as they turned on this student. They whitewashed their own participation in exaggerating and disseminating her narrative, which they later claimed was false. Uh, where had they been for the previous 6 years? Most reprehensible of all was their secret communication with the Rhodes Trust. That is just shocking. If they wanted to do that, they clearly had the obligation to inform Ms. Fierceton. (Example: “Ms. Fierceton, we regret to inform you that we feel compelled to submit to the Rhodes Trust information that has come to our attention . . .”) Instead, they went behind her back, giving her no opportunity to defend herself and no knowledge of where these allegations were coming from. They owed her that at the very least.
For its part, the Rhodes Trust subcommittee seemed to treat her as guilty until proven innocent. Everything in its report as represented here seems colored by what they received from Penn. Their “investigation” seems intended just to verify Penn’s secretive accusations. So they submitted a rehash of what had been handed to them.
Everything about this stinks.
