UMC suburban college student lied about background to become prestigious Rhodes Scholar

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I lean towards the kid having some sort of sociopathic mindset & whatever happened with her mother has been highly, even premeditatively, worked to her advantage. She's obviously intelligent, driven, ambitious & as described in at least one article, charismatic. (HS class president) It's her responses to being interrogated as a liar in her Rhodes application that are the tell. Stonewall defiance that the extensive lies she committed to paper are anything but the truth (well her personal truth, whatever the F that means). She lied. Period. Is this what any Ivy education allows one to do???

I also think she manipulated the people she had contact with during that hospital phase & later at Penn after being called out, and worked her perspective to sympathetic advantage. This whole scenario just doesn't pass the smell test. She was a teen wanting to be the boss of her life & figured out a way. She certainly isn't the first in the history of the world to do whatever she though it would take to achieve that.

Hi MacKenzie's mom. You are mentally ill.

No, I agree with the PP. She appeared to be a happy, involved kid at a prestigious private high school. I totally agree that something bad went down with her mom, but whatever happened doesn't seem like it would naturally lead to being hospitalized for a month. There must be more mental/emotional issues here.

Because never in history has anyone, much less a child, faked a happy persona and family life while the reality at home was bad, abusive or worse.

WTAF is wrong with people on this thread.

+1. Tough crowd. A teen doesn't get moved into foster care (especially from an UMC home) unless very bad things are going on at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I lean towards the kid having some sort of sociopathic mindset & whatever happened with her mother has been highly, even premeditatively, worked to her advantage. She's obviously intelligent, driven, ambitious & as described in at least one article, charismatic. (HS class president) It's her responses to being interrogated as a liar in her Rhodes application that are the tell. Stonewall defiance that the extensive lies she committed to paper are anything but the truth (well her personal truth, whatever the F that means). She lied. Period. Is this what any Ivy education allows one to do???

I also think she manipulated the people she had contact with during that hospital phase & later at Penn after being called out, and worked her perspective to sympathetic advantage. This whole scenario just doesn't pass the smell test. She was a teen wanting to be the boss of her life & figured out a way. She certainly isn't the first in the history of the world to do whatever she though it would take to achieve that.

Hi MacKenzie's mom. You are mentally ill.

No, I agree with the PP. She appeared to be a happy, involved kid at a prestigious private high school. I totally agree that something bad went down with her mom, but whatever happened doesn't seem like it would naturally lead to being hospitalized for a month. There must be more mental/emotional issues here.

She was in the pediatric intensive care unit and you are just trying to smear her. There is an aggressive smear campaign going on here and you are evil.

You certainly don't know that. On any of your statements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I lean towards the kid having some sort of sociopathic mindset & whatever happened with her mother has been highly, even premeditatively, worked to her advantage. She's obviously intelligent, driven, ambitious & as described in at least one article, charismatic. (HS class president) It's her responses to being interrogated as a liar in her Rhodes application that are the tell. Stonewall defiance that the extensive lies she committed to paper are anything but the truth (well her personal truth, whatever the F that means). She lied. Period. Is this what any Ivy education allows one to do???

I also think she manipulated the people she had contact with during that hospital phase & later at Penn after being called out, and worked her perspective to sympathetic advantage. This whole scenario just doesn't pass the smell test. She was a teen wanting to be the boss of her life & figured out a way. She certainly isn't the first in the history of the world to do whatever she though it would take to achieve that.

Hi MacKenzie's mom. You are mentally ill.

No, I agree with the PP. She appeared to be a happy, involved kid at a prestigious private high school. I totally agree that something bad went down with her mom, but whatever happened doesn't seem like it would naturally lead to being hospitalized for a month. There must be more mental/emotional issues here.

Because never in history has anyone, much less a child, faked a happy persona and family life while the reality at home was bad, abusive or worse.

WTAF is wrong with people on this thread.

We are watching an organized smear campaign against a young woman. It is vile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So to summarize -

1. Her mother is a doctor
2. There was some kind of incident between mother and teenage daughter that led to abuse charges (later dropped)
3. The daughter was actually in foster care for a period of time
4. The daughter definitely embellished significant parts of her origin story

Wow, that's a lot. Fierceton sounds like she has a few screws loose, but maybe so does her mother?

And the bio mom ratted out the daughter after she had won the Rhodes (BTW Ivies, in particular, spend a lot of time selecting and grooming Rhodes' candidates - of course Penn would take it away, and diploma, if she faked her story, which her bio mom says she did).

[Anonymous]

You guys are conflating the question of whether she was abused or not with the provable lie of claiming first generation and poor. They are separate things. She’s not first gen college or poor, no matter what her mom did.
I’ve suffered horrific abuse, as in someone is *still* in prison for what happened to me. This is unrelated to the fact that I’m not a first gen college grad, and I’m not from a financially/economically disadvantaged family of origin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's another long read that provides more details from both sides, including why multiple panels at Penn determined that Fierceton had lied: https://www.bigtrial.net/2022/01/in-pillow-talk-conspiracy-penns.html

The prosecutor calls the abuse charges against the mother the biggest mistake of his career, a cousin who lived with Fierceton and her mother denies the abuse and accuses the kid of causing her own injuries, etc etc etc. There's also a lot of detail about Fierceton's involvement in another lawsuit against Penn. Still seems to me that this is one very smart but very crazy young woman.

Wow. That is a pretty big admission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys are conflating the question of whether she was abused or not with the provable lie of claiming first generation and poor. They are separate things. She’s not first gen college or poor, no matter what her mom did.
I’ve suffered horrific abuse, as in someone is *still* in prison for what happened to me. This is unrelated to the fact that I’m not a first gen college grad, and I’m not from a financially/economically disadvantaged family of origin.

And the problem here is that “I’m from a violent, mentally ill, abusive UMC doctor’s home” - the truth - wouldn’t have played into the narratives Penn and Rhodes want to hear. They want to hear poor, they want to hear she had no access to books other than one public library.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys are conflating the question of whether she was abused or not with the provable lie of claiming first generation and poor. They are separate things. She’s not first gen college or poor, no matter what her mom did.
I’ve suffered horrific abuse, as in someone is *still* in prison for what happened to me. This is unrelated to the fact that I’m not a first gen college grad, and I’m not from a financially/economically disadvantaged family of origin.

But Penn is the entity that changed the definition of first generation. They are the ones that say "first in your family to pursue higher education at an elite institution" qualifies as first gen, and under that (crazy, to me) definition she qualifies. So it's not a provable lie.

As far as poor goes, as far as I understand it, when she was applying for schools she was in foster care. Did her parents fill out a FAFSA? Or did she have to apply with only her own income? It's not as cut and dried to me that these are provable lies, as opposed to "I assumed her background looked like this all her life but it was a recent change in circumstances."

[Anonymous]

Didn’t Penn and the Rhodes committee have access to the hospital records in their investigation? I thought they did.

I have to think that they would be highly inclined to find any way they could for her to keep her scholarship and degrees, because this looks so embarrassing for both institutions. Therefore I think the odds of wrongdoing by Fierceton seem high. Universities never, ever want to admit they made admissions mistakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys are conflating the question of whether she was abused or not with the provable lie of claiming first generation and poor. They are separate things. She’s not first gen college or poor, no matter what her mom did.
I’ve suffered horrific abuse, as in someone is *still* in prison for what happened to me. This is unrelated to the fact that I’m not a first gen college grad, and I’m not from a financially/economically disadvantaged family of origin.

I guess the girl would say she no longer had legal ties to her family or origin-not sure if that’s true but there’s a case that she was parentless (and thus first generation in a sense since she didn’t have a college grad helping her navigate the process at home-not the entirety of what first gen students face but not nothing either.) obviously her case is different than a child who never lived with educated and college focused adults but it’s a big deal to be in foster care, even if “only” for two years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I lean towards the kid having some sort of sociopathic mindset & whatever happened with her mother has been highly, even premeditatively, worked to her advantage. She's obviously intelligent, driven, ambitious & as described in at least one article, charismatic. (HS class president) It's her responses to being interrogated as a liar in her Rhodes application that are the tell. Stonewall defiance that the extensive lies she committed to paper are anything but the truth (well her personal truth, whatever the F that means). She lied. Period. Is this what any Ivy education allows one to do???

I also think she manipulated the people she had contact with during that hospital phase & later at Penn after being called out, and worked her perspective to sympathetic advantage. This whole scenario just doesn't pass the smell test. She was a teen wanting to be the boss of her life & figured out a way. She certainly isn't the first in the history of the world to do whatever she though it would take to achieve that.

Hi MacKenzie's mom. You are mentally ill.

No, I agree with the PP. She appeared to be a happy, involved kid at a prestigious private high school. I totally agree that something bad went down with her mom, but whatever happened doesn't seem like it would naturally lead to being hospitalized for a month. There must be more mental/emotional issues here.

She was not in a mental hospital she was in for physical injuries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's another long read that provides more details from both sides, including why multiple panels at Penn determined that Fierceton had lied: https://www.bigtrial.net/2022/01/in-pillow-talk-conspiracy-penns.html

The prosecutor calls the abuse charges against the mother the biggest mistake of his career, a cousin who lived with Fierceton and her mother denies the abuse and accuses the kid of causing her own injuries, etc etc etc. There's also a lot of detail about Fierceton's involvement in another lawsuit against Penn. Still seems to me that this is one very smart but very crazy young woman.

Wow. That is a pretty big admission.

Honestly a mother and cousin publicly talking trash about this young woman cannot be considered reliable narrators.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t Penn and the Rhodes committee have access to the hospital records in their investigation? I thought they did.

I have to think that they would be highly inclined to find any way they could for her to keep her scholarship and degrees, because this looks so embarrassing for both institutions. Therefore I think the odds of wrongdoing by Fierceton seem high. Universities never, ever want to admit they made admissions mistakes.

I don’t think they were wrong to admit her - she could clearly do the work and excelled. I do think this is a reflection of what happens when universities and awards etc put a lot of chips down on the “personal hardship” narrative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t Penn and the Rhodes committee have access to the hospital records in their investigation? I thought they did.

I have to think that they would be highly inclined to find any way they could for her to keep her scholarship and degrees, because this looks so embarrassing for both institutions. Therefore I think the odds of wrongdoing by Fierceton seem high. Universities never, ever want to admit they made admissions mistakes.

You missed the lawsuit portion of the story. That gives them a high motive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's another long read that provides more details from both sides, including why multiple panels at Penn determined that Fierceton had lied: https://www.bigtrial.net/2022/01/in-pillow-talk-conspiracy-penns.html

The prosecutor calls the abuse charges against the mother the biggest mistake of his career, a cousin who lived with Fierceton and her mother denies the abuse and accuses the kid of causing her own injuries, etc etc etc. There's also a lot of detail about Fierceton's involvement in another lawsuit against Penn. Still seems to me that this is one very smart but very crazy young woman.

Wow. That is a pretty big admission.

Honestly a mother and cousin publicly talking trash about this young woman cannot be considered reliable narrators.

The admission by the prosecutor goes far beyond trash talking from mother and cousin. Biggest mistake of a career? That is a very strong statement.