Karen Owen's PowerPoint List Troubling on Many Levels - FanHouse

Karen Owen's PowerPoint list is more famous now than she ever could have imagined. Owen, a Duke graduate of 2010, has become an internet sensation after a mock-thesis titled, "An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics," went viral around the internet and propelled her into the mainstream media spotlight.

Since creating the now widely-seen list -- a project rating her sexual conquests during her time at Duke -- Owen has been thrust to the forefront of discussions about sex on college campuses and amongst American youth, including stories on prominent outlets such as CBSNews.com and on NBC's The Today Show, as well as garnering huge attention in the blogosphere.

Most notably, Deadspin featured the full, unedited PowerPoint presentation, but quickly received a bombardment of angry emails and phone calls from the players, parents, and even the author herself demanding, at the very least, that the real names be immediately removed. Deadspin printed a transcript of her email, saying:

"As the ashamed author of this slide show, I am horrified at your choice to include all the names that you did. While I cannot stop you from publishing it, this item was never meant to be seen outside of a very small circle of people. Obviously, it has gone viral. However, your inclusion of the real names are causing this awful situation to escalate even further and is actually starting to affect peoples' lives in ways that go far beyond mere embarrassment. Remove the names immediately, or I will be adding your blog post to the list of things I discuss with my attorney when we meet. If you would like to talk further, please include your numbers in your response and I will contact you as soon as I can. Again, including real names is simply cruel of you and you will black them out immediately"

In addition to what seems a clear breach of internet privacy, another problematic issue arises. The list mainly contained varsity athletes, complete with full names and pictures of each "subject," and at a prominent university that has had major issues with the image of its athletics. The level of detail is far too great to go into here, but certainly creates problems for the Duke PR team as it involves accounts of athletes exposing themselves in classrooms and public spaces, extremely vulgar "sexting" transcripts, and general recounts of very intimate details that few would want in the public realm.

Owen said in an interview with women's blog Jezebel that she never intended this presentation to go beyond a select group of friends. "I regret it with all my heart," she reportedly told the website. "I would never intentionally hurt the people that are mentioned on that."

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