Mackenzie Fierceton
Mackenzie Fierceton (born Mackenzie Terrell on August 9, 1997; later Mackenzie Morrison,) is an American activist and graduate student currently studying at Oxford University. Raised in Chesterfield, Missouri, a West County suburb of St. Louis, she attended and graduated from the Whitfield School in Creve Coeur. She received a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania (commonly known as Penn), on a full scholarship, through a combined five-year program. Beginning in 2021, Fierceton became embroiled in a scandal with Penn over the representation of her background in her university applications. In her applications to Penn, and later the Rhodes Scholarship, Fierceton stated that she was sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend; was physically abused by her mother to the point of hospitalization; and had lived in foster care for a number of years. She also identified as a first-generation low-income (FGLI) student due to her lack of financial support, as a result of parental estrangement. An investigation by the Rhodes Trust and Penn concluded that she failed to correct statements and impressions made in her application essays, particularly in regard to the severity of abuse, nature of her upbringing, and duration of foster care. Additionally, Penn threatened to withhold Fierceton's degrees, fine her, and refer her to criminal prosecution. She later withdrew from the Rhodes Scholarship, filing suit against Penn for the infliction of emotional distress. Although fellow students and faculty at her high school noticed signs of abuse displayed by Fierceton, her mother denied all allegations and claimed that Fierceton lied for her own personal benefit. She had been hospitalized twice in 2014 for injuries, including concussions and bruised ribs, which she attributes to her mother. After the second stay, which lasted three weeks, state officials placed her in foster care and arrested her mother under child abuse charges, which were later dropped. Missouri state courts later expunged the arrest and removed her mother from the state's child-abuser registry. Penn eventually unconditionally awarded Fierceton her degrees, but a notation about the investigative finding remains in her transcript. In Fierceton's lawsuit, she alleges that their investigation was done to discredit her as a witness in a wrongful death suit filed against the university which Fierceton instigated. Her supporters at Penn have called for the university's acting provost, Beth Winkelstein, to be held accountable for her role in the investigation, characterizing it as a continuation of her abuse. In early 2022, her struggle with Penn and the Rhodes Trust gained national attention through stories run in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New Yorker. Commentators criticized the university and American elite higher education to their use of Fierceton and other recent Rhodes recipients as poverty porn, and for their shifting definitions of FGLI students. Early life Fierceton was born August 9, 1997, by the name Mackenzie Terrell, in Danbury, Connecticut, to Carrie Morrison, a physician who would later head the breast imaging department at St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield, where