An unfortunate young woman, a product of the all-too-typical public school sexualization of children, and recent graduate of Duke University, chronicled her long list of sexual conquests of student athletes for the world to read.
-- From "Duke Winces as a Private Joke Slips Out of Control" by Katharine Q. Seelye and Liz Robbins, New York Times 10/7/10
The woman in question, Karen Owen, 22, who graduated this year from Duke, evaluated what she said were her sexual liaisons with 13 student-athletes during her years at the school, and she prepared a slide presentation, complete with pictures of her subjects and graphs ranking their performance.
She forwarded this mock thesis in “horizontal academics” to a few friends, who forwarded it to their friends. After percolating within the Duke community for nearly a week, with e-mails reaching alumni overseas and message boards buzzing, the report was published online by two related Web sites, Jezebel and Deadspin. From there, it exploded onto the blogosphere, where as of Thursday it was still being shared via Twitter with the frenzied speed of the Indianapolis 500.
The fake thesis [of claimed-actual events] made its splash just as concern was raised anew about the power of the Internet to invade privacy and, sometimes, destroy lives. Last month, at Rutgers University, a student surreptitiously recorded his male roommate’s encounter with another man; days later, the roommate killed himself, unleashing a national fury about cyberbullying.
Seven of the 13 athletes Ms. Owen wrote about were — or still are — on the lacrosse team. This incident has angered many of those who are already sensitive to their image, according to students and alumni who know them.
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