Documentary Analysis: The Hunting Ground

The film I watched was called The Hunting Ground this film started off very interesting. It showed clips of students finding out for the first time they got accepted to the university of their choice. Most of the students screamed of shock and it was obvious they were thrilled. Then a couple girls get interviewed about their experience their first months at that school, almost all of them had the perfect grades and perfect lives. However, these interviews take a twist when many girls getting interviewed start telling the story of when they got raped, there was also about three guys that were victims of this too. The weird part of it all was that more than half of them got raped by a friend or someone they knew for a while. Many of the victims didn’t know how to handle what had happened to them. If they spoke to friends they could be judged, and speaking to their parents was even worse. After a while of keeping that secret in many decided to go talk to someone in their university office. In almost all of these cases, the person in the office starts questioning them about what they could of changed to avoid it etc. instead of helping them and taking care of this horrible problem. The people in the office ultimately say they will help, but several days pass and the victims don’t hear anything about them. The universities do it on purpose, the statistics show almost all universities never expel students for such thing. They do this to make their campus look safe and to not keep

Before watching this film, I did not aware of the prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses. It surprised me how the school administrations suspected the victims are the wrong people.

In the article “Athletic club weekend turns into a nightmare for college freshman” by Carol smith and Lee Van Der Voo, Emily Lorenzen shares her story of being a rape victim. Emily shares her account because she wants to help to prevent rape from happening to anyone else. After interviewing Emily the authors shared a statement expressing that “Emily lorenzen believes that if people hear her story, they will be more comfortable confronting the issue of sexual assault on campus. She wants more conversation, so that men get a clearer definition of rape, face stiffer penalties if they ignore it and administrators learn to reach out to women like her and show compassion. She especially wants bystanders to step up and protect people who are vulnerable.” Rape victims need support to not feel guilty or ashamed, and that is exactly what Emily and her father desire. On this topic, Shipman an influential contributor of the Spokane sexual assault

Annie, also a UNC student, is a white woman from suburban North Carolina. She was sexually assaulted before she started classes her freshman year. She did not report her sexual report because she did not know how to. Once a friend opened up to hear, and asked how to report, she then reported her sexual assault. She was able to speak to a faculty member, the faculty compared rape to football. Annie was then victim blamed.

The Holding Ground documentary was powerful and highly effective in showing the struggle of the Dudley Street and the Roxbury neighborhood and their struggle to in effect take back their neighborhoods. The people in the video were passionate about their community and faced many obstacles like illegal dumping and arson for profit as well as a committee of people who had no idea about the community making decisions without having anyone in the community representing them. In the documentary, Robert Holmes, Jr a Trustee at the Riley Foundation discussed how the board was having a community meeting. He originally thought that Che Madyun was sent in as an agitator. He then realized that she was just passion about her community and had valid points.

“'Til it happens to you, you don't know” You won't know how it feels to be victimized, or what it’s like to have, what seems like, the world against you. The documentary, The Hunting Ground directed by Kirby Dick, gives a small look into the life and treatment of a rape or sexual assault victim on colleges campuses. Using anaphora, the rule of three, and imagery, The Hunting Ground makes it a little easier to understand exactly what is happening.

According to Nancy Chi Cantalupo, writer in the University Chicago Law Journal, “twenty to twenty-five percent of college women are victims of attempted or completed nonconsensual sex” (Burying Our Heads 207). In October 2014, an eighteen-year-old freshman at Old Dominion University was sexually assaulted. She reported her case to the ODU Police Department where she was treated as a suspect rather than a victim (Jane). The university police department denied this young woman of many things such as a medical examination right away, food, drinks and even did not allow her to use the bathroom (Jane). These factors caused her to suffer multiple injuries mentally, emotionally, and physically (Jane). Many cases of on campus sexual assault has come

It has been argued that colleges are more equipped for attending to the emotional well-being of campus sexual assault victims. Title IX, a federal gender equity law passed in 1972

University of Tennessee Knoxville was recently involved in a lawsuit for enabling athletes to sexually assault women by silencing the victims and failing to provide disciplinary actions or even investigation onto the accused. While this is a recent case, this is not the first time this sort of behavior involving a school has been brought into light. One in four women will be sexually assaulted by the end of their undergraduate career (Posluszny). Sexual assault happens throughout society no matter what the gender or age, seeming to be in increasing epidemic over the last few years. While the idea of sexual assault is largely met with public hostility in theory, actions often contradict this. This contradiction lies heavily in a culture that is unwelcoming to the victims and often leads to the perpetrators being tolerated. The existence of rape culture in western society occurs due to the preservation of violent media, patriarchal standards, and the state of the criminal justice system. This culture cannot be improved until we confront each of these problems to their roots.

“I thought it was a progressive school. I thought the resources they advertised from the beginning were real resources I could count on. I felt even more betrayed when they failed me and then refused to acknowledge my earnest desires and pleas for them to evaluate what was happening to me” said Emma Sulkowicz, a student at Columbia University who was sexually assaulted and protested the lack of punishment the man who attacked her received by carrying around a 50 pound mattress, of her frustrations and disappointments towards her university (qtd. in Kim). The FBI says that rape is the second most serious crime, after murder (Mantel). Sadly, about twenty to twenty five percent of women will experience some form of sexual assault during the time

Since I have come to King’s College, I have seen many presentations or speeches about sexual assault on campus. These events are set up to help prevent sexual assault to female college students. I haven’t heard much about sexual assault actually occurring here, I thought maybe because the school does a good job of preventing this from occurring. On Thursday, September 24 I went to the Burke Auditorium to view the screening of The Hunting Ground. The movie made by CNN was a documentary about sexual assaults at college, and some of the facts that they informed us were actually very frightening not just to the women, but for everyone who was at the event.

On college campuses, students have different events and parties to celebrate accomplishments that have been made, and some colleges may even have sororities that throw annual parties for specific occasions. Students are given freedoms that were uncommon to when they were in high school; consequently, scholars are not aware of the dangers that may arise in the world. A show starred on Music Television (MTV), Sweet/Vicious, explains the emotional distress and changes that females may go through after being assaulted. Although some people may believe that females ask for what happens to them, this is not accurate in all cases. Additionally, women are not the only people to be affected by sexual assault, but the majority of the cases are females. Colleges need to value reports of sexual assault and be aware of the actions that happen on campuses to discontinue the amount of ladies who are drugged, hazed, and mentally or emotionally devastated on school grounds.

For years, women have been sexualized publicly on television and other forms of media. With twisted TV shows such as Law and Order and CSI glorifying the stone-cold reality of sexual assaults and rapes that occur daily on college campuses. Television gives away a blissful ending with every sexual assault or rape, but it is far from the truth. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 80% of rape and sexual assaults of female students goes unreported to the police. (Langston) This does not mean it was never documented, the reports were made to the campus police, then should be passed on to the Special Victims Unit, but almost always the report is put aside, forgotten about, then eventually lost. Two solutions of trying to help this overwhelming statistic are to constantly educate female students about the harsh reality of sexual

The movie The Hunting Ground, is a movie about female and male college students who were raped and not justified. In the beginning of this movie, it starts off happy and it shows multiple women and their parents as they open their acceptance letters into their dream colleges. They then have many survivors talk about their horrific experiences with being sexually abused by men who they thought were their friends. Many of the students who went to their universities asking for help were questioned. These questions had no correlation with being raped, like, "what were you wearing?"or "were you drinking?" The university blamed the women who were raped or simply

The Hunting Ground was a very emotional video that highlights a very important issue in our country that most people are not aware of. When it comes to sexual violence, college campuses are more focused on protecting the attacker rather than the victim. What shocked me the most in this film was that most of the faculty members the victims went to seek help from were females, yet the victims were still blamed for their rape. One administrator from UNC at Chapel Hill told a victim “rape is like a football game” meaning that if you look back to that day, what would you have done differently to prevent the rape. Victims who report rapes to university faculties are often questioned about the clothes they wore that day, how much alcohol they had to drink if they said no to the perpetrator, how many times did they said no, etc. Ryan Clifford, a male victim at the University of California, Davis rather than being helped, he was suggested by a faculty member to drop out of school until the situation “blows over.”