To the Editor:
We write to provide some further particulars regarding “Her University Celebrated Her Inspiring Story. Then It Started Asking Questions,” (The Chronicle, January 7). Our focus is not on the debate it reviews over Mackenzie Fierceton’s accounts of her life, though we affirm her integrity. Our concern is instead with the conduct of our university’s administration toward one of our students who has had, all agree, a deeply traumatic life so far. We have long seen the University of Pennsylvania as committed to educating and supporting its students. We are deeply disappointed that in this case, its response has been prejudicial and prosecutorial. The conduct of senior administrators at Penn has violated published policies, principles, and procedures, and disdained the most fundamental commitments we have as academics: to do honest research and advance the welfare of our students.
The Philadelphia Inquirer article on Mackenzie’s Rhodes Scholarship did have errors, and Penn did have to investigate and respond when anonymous St. Louis sources pointed them out. The right response would have been first to find out how those errors occurred, by reviewing with Mackenzie what she had said and why, by examining any changes introduced by the Inquirer reporter, and by examining Penn’s own advising, nominating, and publicity practices. The result might well have been a joint statement by Penn and Mackenzie to the media and to the Rhodes Trust describing her background more fully and correcting common misunderstandings about foster care. It might well have been even more appropriate to ask the Inquirer to issue a correction if, as we believe, the disputed phrase about her time in foster care came not from Mackenzie but from the reporter. Whatever course the Rhodes Trust then took, Penn could next have addressed the ambiguities in its FGLI (“First Generation Low Income”) definitions and messages and strengthened its advising, nominating, and communications processes.
Instead of doing any of this, and instead of assessing the source and reliability of an anonymous communication, Penn Interim (then Deputy) Provost Beth Winkelstein made an unexplained demand to Mackenzie for a Zoom meeting that proved to be a grueling interrogation focused on whether she had described her experiences of abuse accurately. This interrogation violated multiple university norms on disciplinary procedures and trauma-informed investigation. The questioning exhibited confidence that Mackenzie was guilty of malicious misrepresentation. Mackenzie was given no information on the procedures Penn’s ensuing investigations would follow and received no further communication from Winkelstein.
Winkelstein then quickly wrote a letter to the Rhodes Trust that contained blatant errors — errors that a simple glance at Mackenzie’s Penn file would have prevented. Both Mackenzie’s place of birth and name at birth were incorrect. Mackenzie’s application materials clearly stated her attendance at the private high school she purportedly concealed. Winkelstein also falsely charged that Mackenzie had misrepresented herself to her recommenders, without consulting the recommenders. No honest researcher would conduct so careless an investigation. No responsible administrator would forward charges that would harm a student without a thorough investigation, and even carelessness cannot account for inventing a false charge.
Penn’s central administrators appear to have unilaterally concluded early on that Mackenzie was a serial liar. They reached this conclusion not through a formal investigation but through a covert process in which Mackenzie never had an opportunity to refute the sources Penn now cites in the legal brief it has filed in response to Mackenzie’s lawsuit against the university. One senior administrator contended to one of us in the fall that the administration “knows things you don’t know” that it could not reveal — as if secret “knowledge,” arrived at without due process, could ever justify public punishments. We believe, moreover, that whatever Penn’s central administrators believe they secretly “know” is not the truth.
There are, however, things Penn knows, but refuses to acknowledge. Since at least March of 2021, Penn has had access to the more than 80 exhibits Mackenzie assembled establishing her veracity. These confirm her FGLI status, according to multiple definitions long posted on Penn websites, as well as definitions commonly employed across the nation. Mackenzie’s evidence also included extensive testimony to her abuse: from teachers, nurses, doctors, detectives, and others. The testimony speaks to more than a decade of trauma. Penn has refused to believe that evidence, preferring instead to forward a narrative that casts Mackenzie as a grifter.
Why did Penn’s central administrators decide that Mackenzie was a con artist, prior to any formal investigations, and without consulting any of Mackenzie’s teachers, advisers, or classmates at Penn? The university’s recent brief suggests answers. It reveals that Penn’s General Counsel Wendy White conducted her own investigation prior to the one administered by Penn’s Office of Student Conduct, and concluded that Mackenzie’s account of abuse by her biological mother was “fictitious.” As the Chronicle’s article notes, neither the Rhodes Trust nor Penn’s Office of Student Conduct (OSC) ever contended this account was “fictitious.” They made no determination. A Missouri court concluded, on appeal of a prior conviction, that while it was indeed possible that her biological mother had injured Mackenzie, the court lacked “a preponderance of evidence” to decide just what the mother’s culpability was in an interaction in which, after all, only those two were present. General Counsel White simply made her own personal determination of guilt and has acted upon it, disregarding all evidence to the contrary.
Once Penn administrators wrongly convinced themselves that Mackenzie was a seriously disturbed pathological liar, a compassionate response might have been to suggest counseling. Instead, the General Counsel and the now Interim Provost embarked on a campaign of silencing and intimidation. Mackenzie was repeatedly threatened with the loss of her undergraduate degree and the Master’s degree in social work she was in the process of completing. These threats flew in the face of the University policies, procedures, and its responsibilities to support students. Mackenzie has no family and no financial resources. So, threatened with the loss of her sole resource, academic credentials she has earned with distinction, she withdrew from the Rhodes.
Penn then launched the OSC investigation, promising to focus it on Mackenzie’s Rhodes, graduate, and undergraduate applications — -though it proved to be a three-month effort to find every possible discrediting instance of misrepresentation in Mackenzie’s life. This effort descended to such absurdities as questioning her serving as doula to one of her foster mothers. (Mackenzie furnished her doula certificate and a photo of her with her arms still wet with blood from the birth).
Despite this extended effort, the OSC report concluded it could identify only one “inaccurate” statement in those three applications, though it viewed some of her other phrasing as misleading. The one “inaccurate” statement was her checking “first generation” when she applied to the Master’s program in Penn’s School of Social Policy and Practice (SP2).
Penn’s undergraduate admissions office, which had full information on her background, initially classified Mackenzie as “first generation,” and after matriculating, she joined Penn’s FGLI community. Its organization, “Penn First Plus,” defines “first generation” as including those who “have a strained or limited relationship” with their college educated family members. No Penn administrator or adviser ever told Mackenzie not to use this definition in applications. Some administrators, including in SP2, have acknowledged that, when matters are unclear, they instruct students to define themselves in ways that enhance eligibility for financial aid. In Mackenzie’s case, however, her low-income status alone qualified her for substantial aid. Mackenzie’s identification of herself as first generation reflected not only Penn First Plus definitions, but the practice of academic institutions throughout the United States who classify those who age out of foster care as first generation. Mackenzie, like many others who similarly aged out of foster care, understandably sees herself as a family of one.
The OSC report was also sullied by the repeated citation of unnamed “witnesses” and unidentified sources. The OSC later admitted that these included Mackenzie’s abusers. Rogers Smith has protested being made unwittingly complicit in a process that went far beyond its promised scope and relied upon concealed material obtained from Mackenzie’s abusers.
Things then became even stranger. Once having decided that Mackenzie made one inaccurate statement on one application, the OSC might have followed its usual procedures and brought a formal charge against her on behalf of the university for violating Penn’s Code of Academic Integrity. The university did not do so: it has never brought formal charges against Mackenzie. Instead, it referred the matter to the School of Social Policy Practice. Its dean appointed a review committee and then followed their recommendation to sanction Mackenzie for her “first generation” answer and other unspecified “embellishments” in her SP2 application. The committee did not consider any of the exhibits Mackenzie provided them, nor did they interview Mackenzie, or consider Penn’s standard of proof (“clear preponderance of evidence”) for finding students guilty of violating university rules. Mackenzie was granted an “appeal” of the SP2 sanctions to the OSC. Its hearing was not conducted as an appeal of SP2 processes, however, but rather as a hearing on charges the university never formally filed. Because the university did not do so, its Disciplinary Appellate Officer later said she had no jurisdiction to review the hearing or its results. Mackenzie could only have a further appeal to the SP2’s own Committee on Academic Standing (still pending).
Why did the university administration not file charges, if it was convinced of Mackenzie’s guilt, and instead refer her case to SP2? Unlike the university administration, the SP2 faculty and dean could say and did say that they had no responsibility for the university’s multiple FGLI definitions and the shortcomings in its advising and nominating processes. As a result, this unusual, convoluted procedure — OSC investigation, SP2 panel, OSC hearing, appeal to SP2 — effectively insulated the university from any challenge to the ways several of its components encouraged Mackenzie to identify herself as “first generation low income.” (Penn continues to promulgate expansive definitions of FGLI students to this day, allowing it to boast, as it regularly does, that Penn has many such students).
Both of us, as well as Mackenzie, repeatedly raised questions about these processes as they occurred. We rarely received responses. When Anne Norton read Winkelstein’s letter to Rhodes (received in early January of 2021), she contacted both Provost Wendell Pritchett and President Amy Gutmann, informing them of the errors in the letter and the falsity of the charge that Mackenzie had misrepresented herself to her recommenders. President Gutmann did not respond. Provost Pritchett initially stated, “this difficult matter is being handled with sensitivity and care,” and did not respond to Norton’s detailed refutation of that claim. Though she has acknowledged, before witnesses, the errors and false charges in the letter she sent to Rhodes, Winkelstein has never sought to correct the record, retract the charges, or repair the damage her failure to investigate and consult the evidence has done.
When Rogers Smith, serving as Mackenzie’s academic advisor for the OSC investigation and later hearing, communicated with those involved, as the University’s Charter states such advisors have a right to do, the OSC Hearing Officer banned him from obtaining any clarifications that might assist Mackenzie. Penn employees holding administrative positions below the top officers received explicit warnings not to seek to aid Mackenzie.
In short, Penn’s administrators decided, well before any formal investigations, that Mackenzie was guilty of far more than either the Rhodes Trust or the OSC investigation ultimately deemed her to be. They then created novel procedures that limited advocacy on Mackenzie’s behalf, while keeping the university’s own role in shaping her applications out of sight and free from scrutiny.
In its recent brief, Penn continues to make allegations that go beyond the results of its own OSC investigation, accusing Mackenzie of repeated “fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation,” portraying her as someone who would stop at nothing to gain unearned successes in pursuit of her blind, selfish ambition — to become a social worker and a scholar of social work.
We see this portrait of Mackenzie Fierceton as preposterous. In any case, we believe that even when our students err, they deserve our sympathetic support, though they must be held responsible for those errors. In the case of Mackenzie, no malicious fraud has ever been shown, and the sole alleged “error” is one of interpretation. She has been honest in her accounts of her FGLI status, in how she portrayed herself to her recommenders, and in her accounts of her experience of abuse. If Penn administrators thought otherwise, they were still bound to investigate properly, to follow their stated policies, and to observe the trauma-informed practices they tout on their websites. Instead, since November 2021 Penn has treated Mackenzie with prejudice, denials of due process, and simple cruelty.
When it comes to repeated self-serving misrepresentations, Penn’s senior administrators have themselves compiled quite a track record. During the pandemic, they have repeatedly praised their efforts at protecting students, while they abandoned many of the most vulnerable. They have evaded their responsibility for fostering the self-designation they now deprecate while continuing to post definitions of FGLI status that enable them to embellish their work in advancing FGLI students. They have collaborated with people Mackenzie has identified as her abusers and deliberately concealed that collaboration.
This letter, despite its length, does not convey the full extent of misconduct from Penn’s senior administrators. Penn’s failures are the true moral failures in this shameful and disheartening story.
Anne Norton
Stacey and Henry Jackson Distinguished President’s Professor of Political Science
University of Pennsylvania
Rogers M. Smith
Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science
University of Pennsylvania
