Karen Owen, a 2010 Duke University graduate, created a 42-page PowerPoint presentation with the title "An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics."
What Owen called a "senior honors thesis" is not really a thesis, of course. It's a joke in which she rates 13 guys she had sex with while she was a Blue Devil. She names the men, includes photos of them and offers details of their encounters, including locations (once in a library and another in a BMW), descriptions of body parts, quotes and how much alcohol was consumed.
Most of the men are or were Duke athletes; five are on the lacrosse team.
Owen used e-mail to send the joke to a few friends, one of whom sent it to a few more friends. With lightning speed, it went viral, picked up by Deadspin.com and other national blogs. On Thursday, a segment about the "thesis" appeared on NBC's "Today Show."
The Duke campus has been abuzz over Owen's online joke for the past week. It's unfortunate publicity for a campus that made national headlines in 2006 when a stripper hired to perform at a lacrosse team party falsely claimed she was raped. Three lacrosse players were arrested, but the charges were later dropped.
Owen has expressed remorse for her "thesis.
"I regret it with all my heart. I would never intentionally hurt the people that are mentioned on that," the website Jezebel.com quotes her as saying.
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