The Karen Owen list, a Duke University grad’s “fuck list” ranking her sexual encounters with Duke athletes, has gone viral. Watch the Today show video for more
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about the Karen Owen list – which started as a joke between friends, but quickly hit the internet for all to see.
Karen Owen’s list, in senior thesis Powerpoint format, ranked 13 “subjects,” including pictures, names, and full details of each encounter. Karen Owen’s List, aka the Duke List or Thesis List, is prompting controversy just days after universities are trying to address online and offline bullying concerns this school year. Just weeks ago, Rutgers students Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei were accused of illegally taping another student having relations and posting images of it online. Now, Karen Owen, a graduate from Duke University, has authored a powerpoint presentation.
The presentation seeks to mock and praise thirteen male members of the then Duke student body with images, intimate descriptions, and “rankings”. A “friend” of Karen Owen released the “thesis” online which has appeared on other websites often with the men’s faces, names, and details not redacted.
The content of the “thesis” is clear. It seeks to often criticize Owen’s alleged conquests. And while Owen claims she didn’t release it online, she did author the document for others to see in a purely digital environment.
Owen’s list calls into question the extent to which students today feel it humorous and appropriate to mock current and former classmates. In the last two weeks, as many as five teen suicide victims were reported. Not all the victims were bias bullying cases. One was bullying because he was too short. Another was bullying because he was too poor and couldn’t afford the right clothes or tennis shoes. And while Karen Owen found it humorous, her mocking in a full briefed document far extends beyond idle chatter to one’s friends. It was authored digitally and sent out via email.
Owen’s list is pages long. It describes how she met the male companions. She describes and details the athletes on Duke athletic teams. It explains the male’s private physical attributes.
A Jackie Collins novel Owen’s list is not. She could have redacted the names, faces, and player numbers, but she didn’t. Of the thirteen men she depicted, Owen clearly wished her readers to know exactly who the males were. Karen Owen’s list has been online for sometime. But after the list got blogged for about a week, it was soon in Forbes News and national news.
And yet, why did Owen author the document digitally? Forbes writes “There’s no going back now, but maybe Owen should have written out her thesis with pen on real paper, or printed out just one copy that she shared with her friends in person. By putting it in an electronic format and sending it out by email, she practically invited it to go viral.”
Ravi and Wei face invasion privacy claims. Is Owen’s List different? Forbes says “I suspect there are going to be invasion of privacy lawsuits in the near future; I imagine their lawyers are already working hard to get [sites] to take the PowerPoints down.”
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