Another Black Eye for Penn

[Anonymous]

There's at least one if not multiple trolls on this thread, getting off on riling people up with their vicious posts about an abuse survivor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any mother who *laughs to investigators* when asked about her BF molesting her daughter has a screw loose. I cannot take the mom seriously at all after that. Then the BF denies it happened? Even though there’s contemporaneous evidence that it did? And he’s been reported to police *twice* previously by girlfriends? And yet the mom blew off her daughter’s concerns about him? This is a ducked up family.

Also, what was the bit about her mom calling police when the BF showed Mackenzie his gun? It was sort of dropped in there with no context.

(If I posted in one other place am I supposed to say I did? Although not in a chain of posts).

BTW I did see the NY article as providing more detail than before (incidentally, I did not read "broken bones", I did read "bruised ribs") about her seizure at Penn. When the story first broke I was suspicious of the idea that a seizure could continue for an hour without the person entering status epilepticus state, but they may have been administering valium and O2 (my niece has epilepsy, and at times she has had grand mal seizures in clusters). I do wonder how those stairs and the basement are sent up, because ambulance gurneys are capable of folding into a chair shape to handle stairway turns. A little surprised it took a long time for seizures to occur after her original fall down the stairs.

But most telling is her mother's role, which is bizarre. If I had been her and did not want to risk my status or professional position in the community, I also might have fought the legal battles as she did, but other than that I would keep my mouth shut. I might be estranged from my daughter but I wouldn't keep stirring the pot as she seems to have. She got her criminal charges dropped, she got her name removed from the child abuse registry, she could have let her daughter go on leading her life with a new name.

If it were a seizure (like a grand mal seizure), then it would be coded in diagnosis as a seizure. That's one of the things that would come out at trial, if Fierceton were relying on it.

"Seizure-like activity" is a red flag for "not seizures," though.

There are multiple types of seizures. It's not always apparently to EMTs what is happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:WOW. I just read probably 70% of this thread and the entire NY article. I have not read ANYTHING else about this story and somehow missed the other threads. I have read DCUM for almost a decade. And this thread is full of the WORST of DCUM.

The insane psychopaths who get their claws into a story and will not let go. I read that article and felt nothing but blind rage for this girl. Literal red fury. I was a rich abused kid too, although not like this, with physical beatings. All of this victim shaming and abuse, mind blowing. She has contemporaneous writings, a hospital stay, multiple teachers and friends and social workers and the police who did the interview support her and believe her. The only people who do not believe her, by the way, are the people who did not know her when the abuse was happening. Who came in after the fact and got spun. The only people who didn't see her injuries. That is telling. It is easy to pretend a nice pretty white girl is just lying then indict an upstanding member of the community.

You should all be absolutely ashamed of yourself. I think the mother is posting here, because this insane level of vitriol does not make sense unless you have some personal stake in the story. Or maybe it isn't the mother but the families at the school who took her side who feel the tentacles of guilt reaching for them. The father who told Penn she was a manipulator. The attorneys who dropped her case. All the people culpable in her story. She is being punished because she not only survived, but thrived. And as another excellent compartmentalizer, I have always resented how my suffering has never been known because I am just very good at standing the ff back up. She should not be punished for refusing to let her life be ruined by this.

It has been a long time since a thread on DCUM filled me with such fury, I read the article and came here expecting people to be equally appalled and just read this disgusting VILE speculations. I am beyond words, I know I just wrote plenty, but I am finding it almost impossible to disguise my disgust for the posters here.

And GOOD FOR McKENZIE using her voice, because she DOES have privilege and she clearly knows it. That privilege helps her, and it means she can shine a light on this type of systemic favoritism towards a professional looking lady. She can show how abuse has more faces, because she has privilege herself. Just like she reached out to that man who died's widow to give her the tools to support her family and justice for her husband even though again, it just exposed her to more unfair scrutiny. God. I feel dirty for having read this thread.

x1 million

This whole thread is disgusting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:WOW. I just read probably 70% of this thread and the entire NY article. I have not read ANYTHING else about this story and somehow missed the other threads. I have read DCUM for almost a decade. And this thread is full of the WORST of DCUM.

The insane psychopaths who get their claws into a story and will not let go. I read that article and felt nothing but blind rage for this girl. Literal red fury. I was a rich abused kid too, although not like this, with physical beatings. All of this victim shaming and abuse, mind blowing. She has contemporaneous writings, a hospital stay, multiple teachers and friends and social workers and the police who did the interview support her and believe her. The only people who do not believe her, by the way, are the people who did not know her when the abuse was happening. Who came in after the fact and got spun. The only people who didn't see her injuries. That is telling. It is easy to pretend a nice pretty white girl is just lying then indict an upstanding member of the community.

You should all be absolutely ashamed of yourself. I think the mother is posting here, because this insane level of vitriol does not make sense unless you have some personal stake in the story. Or maybe it isn't the mother but the families at the school who took her side who feel the tentacles of guilt reaching for them. The father who told Penn she was a manipulator. The attorneys who dropped her case. All the people culpable in her story. She is being punished because she not only survived, but thrived. And as another excellent compartmentalizer, I have always resented how my suffering has never been known because I am just very good at standing the ff back up. She should not be punished for refusing to let her life be ruined by this.

It has been a long time since a thread on DCUM filled me with such fury, I read the article and came here expecting people to be equally appalled and just read this disgusting VILE speculations. I am beyond words, I know I just wrote plenty, but I am finding it almost impossible to disguise my disgust for the posters here.

And GOOD FOR McKENZIE using her voice, because she DOES have privilege and she clearly knows it. That privilege helps her, and it means she can shine a light on this type of systemic favoritism towards a professional looking lady. She can show how abuse has more faces, because she has privilege herself. Just like she reached out to that man who died's widow to give her the tools to support her family and justice for her husband even though again, it just exposed her to more unfair scrutiny. God. I feel dirty for having read this thread.

+1 I'm right there with you. There are truly some bad people posting here. Rotten to the core. I will also note that people who also defended her were varioous employees of Penn, including the professor who came from Yale and shed light on how Penn should be ashamed of the way it conducted itself. When employees of the very institution that is under scrutiny are willing to speak up and put themselves at risk, that says something to me.

[Anonymous]

I think we have to wait for all the facts to come out at trial, but I think some of the professors have crossed inappropriate lines with the facts we know so far. Their actions have been borderline creepy and I actually worry they may be exploiting Fierceton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we have to wait for all the facts to come out at trial, but I think some of the professors have crossed inappropriate lines with the facts we know so far. Their actions have been borderline creepy and I actually worry they may be exploiting Fierceton.

so now your going to move on to demonizing anyone who supported her or stood up for her or defended her? nice. Whatever fits your narrative...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we have to wait for all the facts to come out at trial, but I think some of the professors have crossed inappropriate lines with the facts we know so far. Their actions have been borderline creepy and I actually worry they may be exploiting Fierceton.

Yeah, Penn’s general counsel, Wendy White deserves a hell of a lot of scrutiny as does provost Beth Winkelstein for the dirty roles they both played in this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nobody is buying this, you can stop spamming the forum. The rich spoiled layabout needs to get off Twitter and DCUM and go get a real job. Imagine the gall to pretend to be poor kid and you’ve never worked a day in your life.

Yes, because graduating with honors and supporting yourself through college isn't work?

Turns out that scared teenager writing in her journal was 100% right. People will often side with the abusers.

You are a broken record circling back to fake inflated grades. Nobody cares about a rich spoiled brat’s As and Bs at a ritzy day school or As and Bs in a soft major at Penn CAS. Or the soft master’s. No mention of standardized test scores because they are dire, which exposes her for the midwit leech she is.

WTF is wrong with you?

"Why do you care so much?" Again, the closed circle of response.

You are not allowed to question the story of Mackenzie Fierceton.

No, the question was about you. WTF is wrong with you?

Not me, DP. But given your response is to double-down on the same, I guess it does not matter.

You may want to think about why you have so much hate for this girl. It’s fcked up.

She is not a girl. She’s a 25 year old freeloader.

If you define "freeloader" as someone who works hard to obtain degrees in helping professions, then I guess I'm good with the fact that she is a "freeloader".

Look, one thing I think we should all be able to agree on is that schools should not be in the habit of selling degrees. Either you earn the degree or you don't. The thing that separates a school like Penn from a school like DeVry should not simply be the cost of the education -- the idea is that Penn is serving as a gatekeeper for very qualified candidates, to offer a higher caliber of education by vetting the students participating.

And there is ZERO accusation that Mackenzie doesn't belong in that group. Everything we know from her classmates and professors at Penn was that she was not only well qualified to be there but above-average. There is zero evidence that Penn made a mistake in admitting her. The only question people seem to have is whether she "deserved" the scholarship she received.

But I think one reason you see many of us from poor and working class backgrounds defending her is that we understand that "ability to pay" is so often used as a proxy for "can do the work." Mackenzie and a huge leg up on most of us because she is from a privileged background and went to a prep school. But the thing we have in common is that like her, we could not "afford to pay." Mackenzie is evidence that these things shouldn't be linked. Seeing Penn and others turn on her simply because of the money, even though there is no evidence that she faked her academic or personal qualifications for admission. By all accounts she deserved to be there. She did the work.

So what exactly did she steel? What did she "freeload"? Not her education -- she earned that. The only accusation is that she fraudulently obtained *access* to her education. But a lot of us think the fact that schools gatekeeper access based on ability to pay is a joke anyway. Schools like Penn want to present themselves as a public good (a non profit institution) who simply education the best and the brightest. Well if that's true, what exactly is the issue. Mackenzie was bright and successful. Someone else paid for her education, but she earned it. Be specific about what it is you think she stole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we have to wait for all the facts to come out at trial, but I think some of the professors have crossed inappropriate lines with the facts we know so far. Their actions have been borderline creepy and I actually worry they may be exploiting Fierceton.

so now your going to move on to demonizing anyone who supported her or stood up for her or defended her? nice. Whatever fits your narrative...

I haven’t demonized Fierceton at all. I am worried about her because she shouldn’t be forced into living with her professors. Or do you think it’s totally fine behavior for a professor to invite their student that they know is an abuse victim to live with them? You think that’s totally fine?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we have to wait for all the facts to come out at trial, but I think some of the professors have crossed inappropriate lines with the facts we know so far. Their actions have been borderline creepy and I actually worry they may be exploiting Fierceton.

Yeah, Penn’s general counsel, Wendy White deserves a hell of a lot of scrutiny as does provost Beth Winkelstein for the dirty roles they both played in this.

I’m the PP who talked about the creepy professors and I also agree with this, FWIW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any mother who *laughs to investigators* when asked about her BF molesting her daughter has a screw loose. I cannot take the mom seriously at all after that. Then the BF denies it happened? Even though there’s contemporaneous evidence that it did? And he’s been reported to police *twice* previously by girlfriends? And yet the mom blew off her daughter’s concerns about him? This is a ducked up family.

Also, what was the bit about her mom calling police when the BF showed Mackenzie his gun? It was sort of dropped in there with no context.

(If I posted in one other place am I supposed to say I did? Although not in a chain of posts).

BTW I did see the NY article as providing more detail than before (incidentally, I did not read "broken bones", I did read "bruised ribs") about her seizure at Penn. When the story first broke I was suspicious of the idea that a seizure could continue for an hour without the person entering status epilepticus state, but they may have been administering valium and O2 (my niece has epilepsy, and at times she has had grand mal seizures in clusters). I do wonder how those stairs and the basement are sent up, because ambulance gurneys are capable of folding into a chair shape to handle stairway turns. A little surprised it took a long time for seizures to occur after her original fall down the stairs.

But most telling is her mother's role, which is bizarre. If I had been her and did not want to risk my status or professional position in the community, I also might have fought the legal battles as she did, but other than that I would keep my mouth shut. I might be estranged from my daughter but I wouldn't keep stirring the pot as she seems to have. She got her criminal charges dropped, she got her name removed from the child abuse registry, she could have let her daughter go on leading her life with a new name.

If it were a seizure (like a grand mal seizure), then it would be coded in diagnosis as a seizure. That's one of the things that would come out at trial, if Fierceton were relying on it.

"Seizure-like activity" is a red flag for "not seizures," though.

There are multiple types of seizures. It's not always apparently to EMTs what is happening.

Yes. And all those seizures have diagnostic codes.

The process of legal discovery is a tremendous thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Penn is a serious college where academic integrity is paramount and the honor code can get a Black boy expelled for lifting a few lines for a random class essay. This rich white woman plagiarizes her entire life to score nearly $400,000 in aid. Keep the master’s, claw back the bachelor’s and make her pay cash for all the aid she received.

She didn't plagiarize her life at all. Did she lie about where she went to school? No. Did she lie about the abuse? No. Did she lie about being in foster care? No.

Penn's accusation is basically that she failed to tell them things they they secretly wanted to know and would have made them evaluate her differently as a candidate, but I think we should all be more than a little skeptical about what they are saying.

If she'd said in her essay, "Oh, by the way, I did horseback riding as a kid, a classic rich kid activity, you should know this in case you ever want to exploit my hard luck story to the press," would Penn have used that to deny her admission? Think about what that means.

My best friend went to Andover for college. Andover has a pretty robust scholarship program and several of her friends from school are people from underprivileged backgrounds. Now, that doesn't mean they were abuse survivors (I'm not going to sit here and tell you I know what an abuse survivor looks like on sight because no one does). When these students applied to college, I am certain some of them marked "first-generation" on their applications. But they also went to an elite prep school and some of them even used to ride horses! Does that mean they are no longer qualified for admission, and if so, why don't those things disqualify all the rich kids who wind up at schools like Penn?

What the heck is the actual basis for admission to these schools? Is Penn really saying that Mackenzie's problem is that her story is not devastating enough, despite the history of abuse and her time in the foster system? I mean what on earth would have qualified Mackenzie for admission?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nobody is buying this, you can stop spamming the forum. The rich spoiled layabout needs to get off Twitter and DCUM and go get a real job. Imagine the gall to pretend to be poor kid and you’ve never worked a day in your life.

Yes, because graduating with honors and supporting yourself through college isn't work?

Turns out that scared teenager writing in her journal was 100% right. People will often side with the abusers.

You are a broken record circling back to fake inflated grades. Nobody cares about a rich spoiled brat’s As and Bs at a ritzy day school or As and Bs in a soft major at Penn CAS. Or the soft master’s. No mention of standardized test scores because they are dire, which exposes her for the midwit leech she is.

WTF is wrong with you?

"Why do you care so much?" Again, the closed circle of response.

You are not allowed to question the story of Mackenzie Fierceton.

No, the question was about you. WTF is wrong with you?

Not me, DP. But given your response is to double-down on the same, I guess it does not matter.

You may want to think about why you have so much hate for this girl. It’s fcked up.

She is not a girl. She’s a 25 year old freeloader.

If you define "freeloader" as someone who works hard to obtain degrees in helping professions, then I guess I'm good with the fact that she is a "freeloader".

Look, one thing I think we should all be able to agree on is that schools should not be in the habit of selling degrees. Either you earn the degree or you don't. The thing that separates a school like Penn from a school like DeVry should not simply be the cost of the education -- the idea is that Penn is serving as a gatekeeper for very qualified candidates, to offer a higher caliber of education by vetting the students participating.

And there is ZERO accusation that Mackenzie doesn't belong in that group. Everything we know from her classmates and professors at Penn was that she was not only well qualified to be there but above-average. There is zero evidence that Penn made a mistake in admitting her. The only question people seem to have is whether she "deserved" the scholarship she received.

But I think one reason you see many of us from poor and working class backgrounds defending her is that we understand that "ability to pay" is so often used as a proxy for "can do the work." Mackenzie and a huge leg up on most of us because she is from a privileged background and went to a prep school. But the thing we have in common is that like her, we could not "afford to pay." Mackenzie is evidence that these things shouldn't be linked. Seeing Penn and others turn on her simply because of the money, even though there is no evidence that she faked her academic or personal qualifications for admission. By all accounts she deserved to be there. She did the work.

So what exactly did she steel? What did she "freeload"? Not her education -- she earned that. The only accusation is that she fraudulently obtained *access* to her education. But a lot of us think the fact that schools gatekeeper access based on ability to pay is a joke anyway. Schools like Penn want to present themselves as a public good (a non profit institution) who simply education the best and the brightest. Well if that's true, what exactly is the issue. Mackenzie was bright and successful. Someone else paid for her education, but she earned it. Be specific about what it is you think she stole.

+1 Working class background with a Ph.D. here. I also had a dangerous parent. I have a lot of empathy for Mackenzie. It's tough when you start processing your trauma and trying to construct a narrative of your life. I can understand how she misrepresented some specifics when telling her story in a way that made sense to evaluators and got her what she needed. I told a significant lie in order to be able to pay for my last year of college. I've also seen universities behave badly both when I was a student and when I worked in academia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any mother who *laughs to investigators* when asked about her BF molesting her daughter has a screw loose. I cannot take the mom seriously at all after that. Then the BF denies it happened? Even though there’s contemporaneous evidence that it did? And he’s been reported to police *twice* previously by girlfriends? And yet the mom blew off her daughter’s concerns about him? This is a ducked up family.

Also, what was the bit about her mom calling police when the BF showed Mackenzie his gun? It was sort of dropped in there with no context.

(If I posted in one other place am I supposed to say I did? Although not in a chain of posts).

BTW I did see the NY article as providing more detail than before (incidentally, I did not read "broken bones", I did read "bruised ribs") about her seizure at Penn. When the story first broke I was suspicious of the idea that a seizure could continue for an hour without the person entering status epilepticus state, but they may have been administering valium and O2 (my niece has epilepsy, and at times she has had grand mal seizures in clusters). I do wonder how those stairs and the basement are sent up, because ambulance gurneys are capable of folding into a chair shape to handle stairway turns. A little surprised it took a long time for seizures to occur after her original fall down the stairs.

But most telling is her mother's role, which is bizarre. If I had been her and did not want to risk my status or professional position in the community, I also might have fought the legal battles as she did, but other than that I would keep my mouth shut. I might be estranged from my daughter but I wouldn't keep stirring the pot as she seems to have. She got her criminal charges dropped, she got her name removed from the child abuse registry, she could have let her daughter go on leading her life with a new name.

If it were a seizure (like a grand mal seizure), then it would be coded in diagnosis as a seizure. That's one of the things that would come out at trial, if Fierceton were relying on it.

"Seizure-like activity" is a red flag for "not seizures," though.

There are multiple types of seizures. It's not always apparently to EMTs what is happening.

Yes. And all those seizures have diagnostic codes.

The process of legal discovery is a tremendous thing.

Which wouldn’t get coded at that time if the seizures aren’t diagnosed until later. Some types of seizures aren’t always immediately diagnosable. They can look like other issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nobody is buying this, you can stop spamming the forum. The rich spoiled layabout needs to get off Twitter and DCUM and go get a real job. Imagine the gall to pretend to be poor kid and you’ve never worked a day in your life.

Yes, because graduating with honors and supporting yourself through college isn't work?

Turns out that scared teenager writing in her journal was 100% right. People will often side with the abusers.

You are a broken record circling back to fake inflated grades. Nobody cares about a rich spoiled brat’s As and Bs at a ritzy day school or As and Bs in a soft major at Penn CAS. Or the soft master’s. No mention of standardized test scores because they are dire, which exposes her for the midwit leech she is.

WTF is wrong with you?

"Why do you care so much?" Again, the closed circle of response.

You are not allowed to question the story of Mackenzie Fierceton.

No, the question was about you. WTF is wrong with you?

Not me, DP. But given your response is to double-down on the same, I guess it does not matter.

You may want to think about why you have so much hate for this girl. It’s fcked up.

She is not a girl. She’s a 25 year old freeloader.

If you define "freeloader" as someone who works hard to obtain degrees in helping professions, then I guess I'm good with the fact that she is a "freeloader".

Look, one thing I think we should all be able to agree on is that schools should not be in the habit of selling degrees. Either you earn the degree or you don't. The thing that separates a school like Penn from a school like DeVry should not simply be the cost of the education -- the idea is that Penn is serving as a gatekeeper for very qualified candidates, to offer a higher caliber of education by vetting the students participating.

And there is ZERO accusation that Mackenzie doesn't belong in that group. Everything we know from her classmates and professors at Penn was that she was not only well qualified to be there but above-average. There is zero evidence that Penn made a mistake in admitting her. The only question people seem to have is whether she "deserved" the scholarship she received.

But I think one reason you see many of us from poor and working class backgrounds defending her is that we understand that "ability to pay" is so often used as a proxy for "can do the work." Mackenzie and a huge leg up on most of us because she is from a privileged background and went to a prep school. But the thing we have in common is that like her, we could not "afford to pay." Mackenzie is evidence that these things shouldn't be linked. Seeing Penn and others turn on her simply because of the money, even though there is no evidence that she faked her academic or personal qualifications for admission. By all accounts she deserved to be there. She did the work.

So what exactly did she steel? What did she "freeload"? Not her education -- she earned that. The only accusation is that she fraudulently obtained *access* to her education. But a lot of us think the fact that schools gatekeeper access based on ability to pay is a joke anyway. Schools like Penn want to present themselves as a public good (a non profit institution) who simply education the best and the brightest. Well if that's true, what exactly is the issue. Mackenzie was bright and successful. Someone else paid for her education, but she earned it. Be specific about what it is you think she stole.

+1 Working class background with a Ph.D. here. I also had a dangerous parent. I have a lot of empathy for Mackenzie. It's tough when you start processing your trauma and trying to construct a narrative of your life. I can understand how she misrepresented some specifics when telling her story in a way that made sense to evaluators and got her what she needed. I told a significant lie in order to be able to pay for my last year of college. I've also seen universities behave badly both when I was a student and when I worked in academia.

+1

For context, because of all the accusations of trolling, I’m one of the PPs who has been critical of Fierceton’s DCUM supporters (because of their absolute unwillingness to be honest about the systemic racism on display in this case and how Fierceton is benefiting from that systemic racism). But I agree with all of this.