Miriam Weeks' Journey to Belle Knox

She Googled: How to be a porn star? Just like that, Duke student Belle Knox found a way to pay her $60,000 a year tuition. While many have focused on criticizing Belle Knox’s decision or her rise to porn fame, she would prefer they focus on what led her to become a college student porn star. Tuitions are skyrocketing. It was time to get a job or get a loan.

Belle Knox was the stage name chosen by struggling student Miriam Weeks . Weeks’ father was working in a private practice when she was accepted to Duke, and was making more than enough money for her to attend the prestigious school. However, shortly after classes began, he was called up by the Army Reserves to go to Afghanistan. Suddenly, he was making less than half of his previous salary. Duke refused to reassess Weeks’ financial aid package, leaving her with a monthly bill of $4,300 that she couldn’t pay. She was left with the choice to take out private loans that would leave her hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by graduation or find a way to pay the bills. In desperation, Weeks joked to her roommate, "Oh, screw this, I'll just be a Successful Porn Star".

Once she said it, she started to think about the idea more seriously. "I Googled 'how to be a porn star?' and all of these agencies popped up. And then there's this website called SexyJobs.com. It's like the Monster.com of porn." She submitted a few pictures that she had taken herself, her stats, and a short description of herself ("I'm a college girl with a naughty side' or something like that"). She was called by a company called Facial Abuse a few days later. They offered to fly her to New York for her first shoot, at a rate of $1,200 per scene. The night before leaving, Weeks says, "I was horny. I remember thinking, 'This is gonna be really hot.'"

The shoot was not the best experience. The director was trying to get inside her head and figure out what made her tick, and Weeks faced unexpected verbal abuse. After returning to Duke, Weeks started having second thoughts about her decision. "I remember just being a wreck, like, 'Oh, my God, what have I done? This is the most embarrassing thing ever. What if somebody finds it?’” However, she still needed to pay her tuition. Weeks ended up signing with Matrix Models, who booked her for five scenes over Thanksgiving Vacation. She told her parents she was remaining at Duke for break, and flew to L.A. on Matrix Models’ dime. Weeks returned after break with $7,000 and the feeling she had things figured out.

"It was glamorous, exciting. Guys would reject me, and in my head I'd be like, 'If only you knew that I'm a porn star. . . .'" Weeks explained her new income to her parents by telling them she was selling pot, which was legal in Washington, "My parents would have sold their organs to keep me from having to do porn. When my brother found out, he said, 'Miriam, if I had known our family was having such an issue with finances, I would have worked every single extra shift I could have.' But I didn't want my family to have to burden itself. I wanted to lay as low as possible and just make the money. I didn't want to have some big career. I looked at it like this: There's hundreds, if not thousands, of porn stars. What are the odds of somebody even noticing me? I realize it was very naive."

In under 2 months, one of Weeks’ friends recognized her in a video. He promised to keep it a secret, but promptly told his fraternity brothers. From there, the news spread like wildfire. Duke was on high alert after recent sex scandals, and the news was not taken lightly. Weeks tried to make the best of the situation. "When I was exposed, I was still trying to come to terms with who I was. I was ambivalent about porn when I was outed, and there was that whole idea of shame, like, I'm a smart girl – I'm the only person in my school in 10 years to get into Duke – what am I doing?" Once she came to terms with her work and who she was, Weeks became an advocate for porn and used her popularity to speak out against tuition rates and spin media attention to the reasons she started performing in the first place.

The difficult economy has increased enrollment in college. The federal government has subsidized education through grants and loans for decades. Colleges and universities have no incentive to lower tuition. The money will keep flowing in no matter what they set the numbers at. Duke officials have responded to Knox’s publicity by saying that $60,000 is a bargain, and they actually spend $90,000 a year on each student. Let’s break that $90,000 down. Building and maintaining physical infrastructure on campus gets $8,000. Another $14,000 goes to pay a share of administrative and academic support salaries, which in Duke’s case includes more than $1 million in total compensation to the university president, Richard Brodhead, and more than $500,000 to the provost, Peter Lange, according to 2011 tax filings. Also, $14,000 goes to dorms, food, and health services; $7,000 goes to staff salaries for deans and faculty; and miscellaneous costs take up another $5,000.

Weeks has stated that she has considered dropping out. Her career has cost her time with her family, much ridicule and harassment, and all of her free time. While her fellow students are on spring break in Greece or London, she is working a set. For now she continues the crusade for tuition cap and controls while taking on occasional porn gigs. What started as a joke led her to the top of the adult industry. Her cause though, has become no joking matter. Don't be surprised to see more Ivy League porn stars if the rising cost for a quality higher education in the USA continues to spiral upwards.