After Lovelace bought Morrison a gun for her birthday, Mackenzie wrote, If Im being perfectly honest, Im terrified. She described an incident, a year earlier, when she had fallen asleep watching a movie in her moms bed and woke up to Lovelace on top of her, feeling my boobs, running his hand around my inner thighs & exploring other places. She got out from under him, ran into her own room, and eventually called her mother, who wasnt home, and related what had happened. I helped organize a storytelling event for a friends church at a board and care institute, where [I met] Mackenzie Morrison, the daughter of the church lady who Our customers can browse an electronic catalog of 1.4 million titles by author, title, subject, and keywords and place orders via computer. Mackenzie Fierceton (@MFierceton) March 28, 2022. Its just difficult to describe what its like to go through the world feeling like you dont have some sort of anchor., Mackenzie moved around Nortons house lightly and with deference. Mackenzie stayed at school late that night, rehearsing for a musical. She was no longer seen publicly as Jeff Bezos ex-wife first. That summer, Mackenzie decided to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, to get a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford. In the meantime, an administrative law judge for the S.E.C. After filling a notebook with lists of surnames that she thought sounded bold (Fairstone, Stronghill, Silverfield), she submitted a petition with the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, changing her name to Mackenzie Fierceton. He was known among fellow teachers for giving high-fives to all the faculty members on Friday afternoons. In a letter to herself, an exercise assigned to all the scholars, Mackenzie wrote, I know that my first 18 years on this planet will always be a part of who I am, but how do I move on and start this new chapter of my life without pretending like it never happened?, Elizabeth Cannon, the senior associate director of Civic House, where the program is based, sensed that Mackenzie was more vulnerable than she acknowledged. Some Penn professors have wondered if Mackenzies role in the lawsuit might have bearing on the universitys scrutiny of her credibility. It came as a huge surprise even to many at the school when the news emerged in March 2021 that the billionaire philanthropist and the chemistry teacher had wed a few weeks earlier. Mr. Bezos later said he would find her writing in hotel bathrooms when he woke up on vacation. Mackenzie went to Whitfield, a private prep school in St. Louis, where the schools wellness director, Ginny Fendell, called her the queen of compartmentalization. She got As, served in student government, played varsity soccer, managed the field-hockey team, and volunteered for the Special Olympics. The car was a Chevy Blazer, a gift from Mr. Bezos father. Mr. Jewett lived in a modest house and had separated from his wife in 2018. Since Mr. Bezos and Ms. Scott joined the board, tax records show, the foundation has given away more than $300 million. She called me and was like, Oh my god, my kids being bullied, and as a parent Ive found theres not a lot of resources, said Dr. Espelage, now a professor at the University of North Carolina. She was ashamed to tell people that shed been in foster care; she felt so alone that she thought about dropping out. Her college counsellor recommended that she apply to universities through a nonprofit, called QuestBridge, that matches exceptional students facing financial challenges with schools that will fully fund their tuition. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Her own life has taken sharp turns that have shaped her choices, including her extraordinary leap into philanthropy, which in under three years has exceeded $12 billion in grants. When concerns were initially raised about her first-generation status, Mackenzie had e-mailed the associate director of admissions and recruitment at Penns social-work school to ask how former foster youth should answer the question. Norton wrote a letter to Gutmann, Penns president, warning that the university had been made complicit in a long campaign of continuing abuse. Norton says that Gutmann did not respond. Waitressing in New York had proved more grueling than waiting tables in Princeton during college, leaving her too tired to write. Three decades after worrying about making rent, and even in the wake of her recent gifts, Ms. Scott, 52, has a net worth that hovers around $50 billion, according to Forbes magazine. After she was released, her classmates told her how long they believed she had waited for medical care. Dr. Morrison was arrested at the time but the case was dropped by prosecutors who said they could never prove Mackenzies claims. The $12 billion in grants she has announced add up to more than the total lifetime giving of the late Eli Broad and his widow, Edythe, renowned for their generosity in Los Angeles, not to mention far richer couples, like Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. . She really wanted constructive criticism.. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. Im telling my story because I think its a microcosm of how institutions of power can manipulate truth, she told me. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. My mom, Mackenzie responded. There is currency to a story about a person who comes from nothing and thrives in a prestigious setting. Norton has tried to create new domestic routinesdoing puzzles; watching rock-climbing movies, a shared interestso that, she said, its not about her fitting into our life. Not only did she support his dream, she worked alongside him to build the company. In August, 2020, Logan filed a lawsuit, asserting that her husbands death was owing to system-wide logistical and structural failures created by the negligence and recklessness of the university. It is not clear how the Tuttles revived their fortunes so completely. He could not afford it, she wrote, pretending he had a job that made money and also pretending he could spend it., Ms. Morrison, who died in 2019, called Ms. Scott an extraordinary writer, almost full-blown, and indeed the novella is strikingly assured, as well as a little bloody, macabre and almost Gothic in places. She just bursts out laughing, Mackenzie wrote. In another letter to Ms. Morrison, she wrote that he hired her based largely on a transcript of your phone recommendation.. degree. Before Morrisons case could go before a grand jury, the St. Louis County assistant prosecuting attorney dropped all the charges. students, she had expressed a similar concern about the sorts of personal statement expected from disadvantaged students: The expression that comes up is poverty porncontinually being pressured by your school, when you get to a higher-education institution, or even in high school, to share your storyand thank donors, and whatever the case is. (Penn said that it doesnt pressure students to tell their stories but supports them when they choose to do so. student organization. She wrote that Mackenzie, in her application, had failed to acknowledge her upper middle-class upbringing and provides a description of a life of abuse that the judicial process concluded could not be substantiated. Winkelstein attached orders showing that a circuit court had reversed the D.S.S.s finding of abuse, and that Morrisons arrest had been expunged. Its, like, Youre not giving us the right sob story of what it means to be poor. The university is so focussed on what box she checked, and not the conditionsher lack of access to the material, emotional, and social resources of a familythat made her identify with that box. He went on, Colleges are in such a rush to celebrate their first Black, their first First Gen for achievements, but do they actually care about the student? Brandt later noted that Morrison had not asked how Mackenzie was doing or showed any emotion., Brandt also asked Morrison about the episode, which Mackenzie had reported the day before, when Mackenzie had woken up to Lovelace touching her breasts. She wanted to sever her remaining ties with her biological family, and she hoped a new name would make it harder for her mother to find her. Mackenzie is making this all up. They had a baby boy at 16 and then got And Ms. Scott changed her author bio on the Amazon website to read: She lives in Seattle with her four children and her husband, Dan. Mr. Jewetts Twitter page abruptly vanished, leaving behind ghostly traces of an account where colleagues had bantered with him about science. She was 23 and he was 29. Morrisons familys roots in the United States go back for generations. She described the one who almost killed me. I am grieving the idea of herthe idea I had once created for her., Mackenzie told me that, in the past year, shes experienced a state of self-doubt that she hadnt known since high school: There have been moments of almost panic where I am just cognitively questioning myself, like, Did I misremember something? Its easy to slide back into that state, because I want anything other than the realitythat it is my bio family who has caused so much harmso I will do backflips to try to make it not true. In her high-school journal, she had described this cycle of doubt. Liz, the wife of the protagonist, Luther, pins a clipping of a San Francisco Chronicle article about Bay Area philanthropy to the refrigerator, with a picture of her sister and two daughters on the porch of their hilltop Victorian. There was commonality in the fact that a lot of us had different relationships with home or family. When she got into Penn, she said, I had never heard of F.G.L.I., but these labels resonated with a story I was still trying to process., Mackenzie was one of fifteen freshmen selected for Penns Civic Scholars, a program for students committed to social justice and community service. How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons. When she visited friends and former teachers, she tried to take up as little space as possible. 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