A very strong piece by Rachel Aviv in The New Yorker.
The facts here are very complicated, so I can't summarize it or excerpt enough to enlighten you about this particular case. So let me quote one part near the end that says something more general:
One of Mackenzie’s professors, Anne Norton, who teaches political science... told me, “I cannot avoid the sense that Mackenzie is being faulted for not having suffered enough. She was a foster child, but not for long enough. She is poor, but she has not been poor for long enough. She was abused, but there is not enough blood.” Penn had once celebrated her story, but, when it proved more complex than institutional categories for disadvantage could capture, it seemed to quickly disown her. Norton wrote a letter to [Amy] Gutmann, Penn’s president, warning that the university had been “made complicit in a long campaign of continuing abuse.” Norton says that Gutmann did not respond.
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Sounds like a dangerous precedent. What if they find out that some of their supposedly minority students or staff are actually of mixed race? What if they're insufficiently diverse to count? I mean, should the Obama kids really representative of African Americans?
Just kidding, they'll never let those questions surface.
When I was getting a Masters Degree at Dartmouth in health policy there was a young woman in the class who had grown up in foster care. She told me she would rather have been in an orphanage.
As the search parameters for 'diamonds in the rough' expand, and as the need increases for ever more marginal cases to champion for virtue points, expect more and more stories like this.
Worse still, it means that other truly exceptional achievements, deserving a champion, will be overlooked because they do not fit the assigned, topical 'frame' of the moment.
Life was better when the Sisyphean personal struggle stories of so many came out long after they were done, maybe in that person's lifetime, but much closer to its end. The hunt for this kind of thing has become very transactional, very journalistic - the subjects badly want a story told, and there are too many people that badly want to tell it.
It's cheap. So very very 21st century.
Sometimes I am positively pea-green with envy for today's youth, the drugs they get to take for school, the excuses made for them, the tearjerking maladies they accrue, all the special attention...the breaks.
What I couldn't have done with all that!
I was born too soon.
This young woman had filled out forms that gave her good reason to identify herself as coming from an economically deprived family. But her birth family — which, if she's telling the truth — abused her terribly, was upper middle class. So she didn't fit the stereotype of a poor person and her mother was highly educated, so she didn't literally fit in the category of first generation to go to college, but the school DIDN'T define that category literally.
I bet she got disowned for thinking for herself.
Penn's actions, according to this account, are bizarre. Basically punishing someone for not fitting into Penn's vision for marketing.
College admissions has become like the initial rounds of American Idol - you'd better have a sob story. Not that any of the sob stories have anything to do with whether you can sing, or are a good fit for college.
She won a Rhodes Scholarship. So did Bill Clinton and Rachael Maddow. And, of course, Mayor Pete.
Isn't she the best and the brightest? What does her economic background matter.
Penn fully supports Lia Thomas. Why not this natural woman?
wild chicken @ 2:18: "What I couldn't have done with all that!"
Threadwinner, at least in the Sarc category.
Wow! This young lady was screwed over by the elites that control higher education. Over and over and over. No wonder power is the only goal in social games these days. Without the insider money power to rig these systems, you will be trashed.
And then along came Hillary Clinton to add gangland assassinations and paying for fake charges of Russian treason into the game.
And people wonder why lawyers are a necessary part of life.
She's accused of misleading the school and the Rhodes Scholarship program about her underprivileged background, but they seem to have wanted economic diversity and defined it generously to acquire students in this category, then gotten more restrictive when she did so well that there were press stories about her. She'd changed her name to keep her mother from knowing where she was, but the press stories — which benefited the school — made it possible to find her.
Foster parents are like Gump's box of chocolates. Some of 'em are good, some of 'em ain't. Far too many decide to foster because of the cash flow, not for the love of children.
..."She'd changed her name to keep her mother from knowing where she was, but the press stories — which benefited the school — made it possible to find her." Would that make them both an 'Enemy of the People'?
It's gotten very difficult to be pure these days. Our woke progressives take a back seat to the Taliban only in that they don't currently kill people. And they do allow women to go to school, but only if they use the right language, correct pronouns, jazz hands (when needed), and point out any apostates in the room. MacKenzie Fierceton was apparently outed.
AOC grew up in beautiful upper middle class Yorktown Heights in Westchester County. Ketaji Brown-Jackson grew up in a middle class family in Miami and went to school at Howard and Harvard. There are struggles and there are struggles. It seems to me it's not the actual struggle that's important to the progressives, it's the symbols. MacKenzie appears to be entirely too white. With her whiteness, she needs more 'struggle points' than a POC would need. She didn't meet Penn's standard for struggle points.
Ann Althouse said...
She's accused of misleading the school and the Rhodes Scholarship program about her underprivileged background, but they seem to have wanted economic diversity and defined it generously to acquire students in this category, then gotten more restrictive when she did so well that there were press stories about her. She'd changed her name to keep her mother from knowing where she was, but the press stories — which benefited the school — made it possible to find her.
The more rules and "programs" they create, the more opportunities they have for selective enforcement.
She made an administrator mad.
Now they can selectively punish her.
Nothing would have happened if she stayed in line.
"Penn's actions, according to this account, are bizarre."
Didn't you hear, they changed their motto to leges sine mercatus vanae
I should think it's pretty clear that for financial aid purposes--in which Penn has an interest--they encouraged her to describe herself as she did. Penn wants to have it both ways.
Remember when Mattress Girl existed, and was invited to sit at a SOTU with Sen Gillibrand?
OH! How we love a heroic, suffering young woman! How hard it is to handle when we discover they overstated their suffering so they could be rewarded!
Her Mother mistreated her.
Her Father mistreated her.
Her Stepfather mistreated her.
Her foster family mistreated her.
Her high school mistreated her.
The family court judge mistreated her.
Penn mistreated her.
Penn mistreated her again.
Penn mistreated her once more.
Oxford mistreated her.
Did I miss any? Probably so.
Here is an article laying out the case that she materially misled the school. What caught my eye was her claiming that a fight with her mother had left her hair "caked with dried blood," but the hospital records don't back her up. That seems like something objective that could be verified.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/11/rhodes-scholar-denied-honor-after-dishonesty-about-life-story/
Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) is Pro-Choice "ethical" (i.e. selective, relativistic, exclusive) dogma.
I read about this case in another venue, and the girl seemed like an amoral con artist.
One way to bootstrap your way up the ladder is to tell the authorities what they want to hear even if you have to put whipped cream on it. I am extremely suspicious about this story, and particularly the New Yorker’s version. Of course, we all saw their standards when the Bret Kavanaugh “wanglegate at Yale” story didn’t check out and they printed it anyway.
And yes, I feel for her if she offers are being rescinded now because she did not suffer enough. But how many kids applications are being rescinded or rejected because *they* do not suffer enough? The common application is full of questions about overcoming obstacles. The schools want to feel good about themselves! So if you are someone whose parents are ok, and you get good grades, you aren't nearly as juicy a morsel to a prestigious University as a kid who has gone hungry or shed some blood. The kids from norm famous get punished too, just at an earlier stage in the process.
The whole thing, college admissions and the common app and rewarding sad stories, it's all a mess.
Interesting article but it's clear that the author has picked sides in a complicated story. There are reasons to doubt her spin -- the prosecutor's office in St Louis declined to pursue the case against the mother; the courts in St Louis has repeatedly found grounds to doubt the daughter's claims; Penn is as woki-doke a university as they come, and the particular schools at Penn involved in the story are even more so (Social Work); and the sources at Penn quoted at length by the author sound like they are even more wokey than the already very wokey standard-issue academic; and the Rhodes team seems to have shared those doubts.
No idea where the truth lies, and not convinced by this article.
Ann, Thank you for linking this article. It was a frustrating, infuriating read... but necessary. My wife and I are foster parents in the St. Louis area and the way the system continues to fail at risk kids is truly maddening.
If the award was merit-based, this wouldn't be an issue.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
This young woman had filled out forms that gave her good reason to identify herself as coming from an economically deprived family. But her birth family — which, if she's telling the truth — abused her terribly, was upper middle class. So she didn't fit the stereotype of a poor person and her mother was highly educated, so she didn't literally fit in the category of first generation to go to college, but the school DIDN'T define that category literally.
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She should have been honest about her abuse -- timely, and sought out charitable scholarships for abused women who can't afford college yet, and aren't willing to put in the years of work themselves to raise the funds...
Instead, she lied about her privileged "birth" family that raised and educated her. She had all the advantages, and then disavowed them and pretended to be a First Gen college student, with all those advantages, and took something away from a truly needy student whose family could not afford to provide those advantages...
And it's the school's fault her lies caught up with her? No.
She played a game, and when she kept "winning" at the game, it caught up to her. Rhodes knows true need, even if Penn was pretending. Still I don't think they encouraged her to fudge or misrepresent so much...
She should have been honest from the beginning about the horrific abuse, AND her status as a third-generation college student with educated parent(s) and grand(s). Instead she originally downplayed the abuse and played up the First Gen student status.
She gambled and bet on the wrong narrative and lost.
Let her work for a few years in the real world, save up, and then fund her own schooling and living expenses. She's smart enough now. Surely she can do it ON HER OWN at some point like most First Gens do?
I've only read a few of the stories and not the complete New Yorker piece. I dislike Penn and the Ivy admission departments and want her story to be true . . . but, but, but I knew a couple of serial liars at HLS (I lived in next room to one of them for a year) and I know (currently) a couple young serial liars like this woman - people who are bright and educated, but who just make up stories about themselves for attention or advancement or so that people will feel sorry for them. Something just smells like that with this one.
Obviously she should have gone with the high cheekbone Indian story.
@Tom T. As someone who was in the hospital in January, the records they made were false as to my diagnosis and symptoms. They simply were not documented correctly. The fact that it’s not noted is not meaningful
It is pretty easy to find the girl's mother, Carrie Morrison, MD, a graduate of the University of Missouri and the University of Iowa Medical School. I would say that is not too shabby an educational background, and the girl is not a "first generation college graduate" by any definition.
I didn't sign up for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but there is an article in Google search about the charges against the mother being dropped after investigation by the St Louis County Sheriff's Department. The girl says in the NY Post article, “Where I’ve landed is that I have a right to write about my experiences as I experienced them." I guess she thinks it is "her truth".
I'd say, on the one hand, Penn went to a lot of trouble to check this out and ended by asking the girl to drop her Rhodes, which she did, and, on the other, Penn is run by a bunch of idiots (see Lia the Swimmer and the Amy Wax affair), and Penn and the girl deserve each other.
I don't know what the truth behind this story is- I have read several other accounts of Ms. Fierceton's story, with the writers taking opposite sides. The New Yorker version clearly favors the young lady's accounts, but is pretty balanced otherwise in the details and controversies. My gut level reaction overall is that she is a liar at a prodigious level, but there is no evidence that isn't equivocal that I have seen anywhere. Her detractors focus on what I consider to be evidence of little weight- the medical records of her stay in the hospital contradicting her written journal, and the parts about her being the first generation of her family to attend college. I can see how Penn could be blamed for causing the latter misrepresentation, and I am being generous to the university in framing it as a misrepresentation. The medical record discrepancy is meaningless for anyone who has ever dealt with a fucking hospital chart- the mistakes I have found on such forms would lead me to discount them in this case completely.
like her name : hope she has ton of fierce in her as she battles this.
The father of one of Mackenzie’s high-school peers reached out to a Penn official, to explain that the news coverage about Mackenzie was inaccurate.
Did anyone ask if that father happens to be a friend of her mother? Just curious.
The girl was supporting herself and had cut off contact with her mother. Penn, especially Penn’s general counsel, Wendy White, seem to have had excessive and unnecessary contact with her mother.
Missouri is now Don't want to see state
so any /facts/ reported out of Missouri need to be verified independently
I don't think the administrative state comes out very well in the story. It seems to have no reliable, disinterested mechanisms to call upon in a search for truth. "You filled out Form X thus and so but the booklet on how to fill out the Form X said this and that." "Form B has Fact 7 but Form 17A (amended) about the same incident doesn't mention Fact 7." A Court of law said something happened and another Court of Law denied it all. An identity for the administrative state or University office is the sum of such records but such records are subtracting, adding and cancelling each other as life grinds on. So, real identity found in the records of the administrative state? I think not. But you know, if this were a criminal the administrative state would identify him for treatment [jail time, meds, as her, etc.] on the basis of just such contradictory records, flattened and harmonized into a profile.
Can't form an opinion either way. She could be faking and it might all be true, but somewhat exaggerated. It's significant that she spent time in the foster system, but also significant that the State of Missouri also declined to prosecute her mother.
As far as Penn goes; one would hope they would investigate cases like this before they commit to giving students special status or financial aid and not just clap their hands and shout; "Oh goody! Another unfortunate waif! Aren't we such good people!"
She just needs to claim to be a transwoman and the cheating will be forgiven.
One can certainly fault her for picking such a stupid name for herself, but it's too late in the day for American universities to start pretending that they care about integrity. Give her credit for showing the cunning and ruthlessness that our meritocracy values so highly and make her Oxford's problem.
I grew up with an emotionally abusive mother and have found that most people are incapable and unwilling to even listen to anything about my experiences. Perhaps the thought of something like that possibly happening to them shatters their confidence -- it's too horrible for them to contemplate. Once a close friend who visited my home and saw first hand what I had dealt with told me, "Most people if they had to deal with one third of what you have, would have collapsed, would have been destroyed."
I don't know what is the truth in this case but I didn't get any sense of empathy for that aspect of Mackenzie's experience or for the damage to one's psyche of a bad mother, regardless of your economic situation.
I never have been in the position of asking for anyone to give me anything in compensation for what I went through. I did record my experience in a journal, an assignment for 12th grade English, which resulted ultimately in my English teacher's help in me getting away from my family and going to a college in another town. My mother, sisters, and father bitterly hated me for doing that.
I have suffered in silence in the past fifty years or so, with people making lots of assumptions about me receiving privileges and encouragement which I never received and not needing assistance or support. This is the first time I have ever written about any of this in a public forum and of course I'm doing it more or less anonymously.
I don't know if my situation was/is worse, at least I was never physically abused, but I honestly can not imagine having to deal with the mental anguish and stress of public humiliation, assuming that she is not a con artist.
Wildswan,
Does her name on the form appear as "Buttle" instead of "Tuttle", do you suppose?
While from the perspective of a consumer of "news" stories I am in no way able to really ascertain who is telling the truth. I can't help finding the New Yorker article contains more red flags than Red Square on May Day.
It's a new trend.
From the article:
Berthmann claims her family trafficked her for the first 15 years of her life until she ran away from home and has shared her story in multiple public settings.
https://www.ksl.com/article/50350852/utah-human-rights-advocate-arrested-accused-of-faking-cancer-diagnosis
Have they not yet changed that to the Zimbabwe Scholarship?!
"Before leaving, the caseworker, WHO WAS WHITE, explained that “she didn’t really need anything else from us and she was sorry to bother us, but was glad everything worked out,” Mackenzie wrote." [emphasis added]
Did anyone else laugh out loud when you read that sentence? What are we supposed to make of that interjection by Rachel Aviv or her editors? Does Rachel Aviv think it would have been different if the caseworker were black? Asian? Hispanic? Gay? Trans? Ukrainian?
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