The Hunting Ground

For my campus immersion activity, I watched the movie The Hunting Ground. This movie is a documentary based on college students and their struggles they have encountered about begin sexually assaulted on their campus. Throughout this movie, I found myself almost in tears, or clenching my blanket so tight because it was so difficult and frustrating to hear these victim’s stories and how they almost always never received the help they were hoping for from their own universities. Hearing statistics repeatedly mentioned about how colleges could have over 200 reported sexual assaults, but have only 1 expulsion, or only have 10 suspensions, is completely ridiculous and inconceivable. What is it going to take for these colleges to step up and help these victims and hold the assailants accountable?

Maria Cabrera Documentary Reflection The Hunting Ground is a documentary film targeting the frequent sexual assaults on college campuses in the United States. Colleges across the United States have failed to meet justice for victims with confrontations. The film is concentrated on Annie. E. Clark and Andrea Pino, two graduates of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who decided to file a complaint about their assaults while they were attending the University.

In Zoë Heller’s Rape on the Campus, She advocates how sexual assault happens often on campuses, and that it needs to be significantly more addressed; as it is scarce for women to bring the college’s attention to the assault. Heller asserts that, “20 percent of women are sexually assaulted during their time at college and as few as 5 percent of these assaults are ever reported to police” (185). Noting that ninety-five percent of sexual assault cases are dealt by the college, colleges can take advantage and handle its reputation by outputting false information to cover any potential negative reputation. While colleges are forced to obey the rules of title IX, I believe this is an inadequate effort to remove bias teachers and workers from colleges.

The documentary called The Hunting Grounds, had multiple concepts that relate to sociology. Using a sociological perspective, it was very prevalent to see the ways college campuses use patriarchy and gender stratification to keep women who have been sexually assaulted on campus from disclosing information or even getting help about these issues. Through the discrimination against women at these gender institutions the women formed a Feminist movement to bring awareness and help to the victims on campuses all around the world and to stop the assaults from reoccurring. The Hunting Grounds is a documentary that reveals the untold stories of women on college campuses and how these women have fought to have their voice heard about sexual assault on campuses. Sexual assault and rape on campuses has always been a major problem for colleges all over the world yet very little has been done to protect the students.

Sexual abuse and rape culture have become an increasingly hot subject in the past few months as hundreds of cases are being brought into the light because women are feeling

Before graduating from college, Sebold fought long and hard to bring justice to herself and to many women like her, rape victims, and women whose lives were forever changed by the pain of male aggression and forceful domination. Sebold was walking along a street just outside her college campus in syracuse when she spotted her rapist and she immediately went all the way back to the safety of her campus dorm and contacted the police to give her statement and report him. For many women who are victims of sexual abuse, seeing their rapist or abuser behind bars is not an option but Alice Sebold did not want to become another forgotten case in a filing cabinet as “closed” or “unsolved”, she wanted justice for herself and for all women like her and she was willing to do all it took to make sure she got it. However, a case study done by RAINN states that “Out of every 1000 instances of rape, only 13 cases get referred to a prosecutor, and only 7 cases will lead to a felony conviction.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based Reporting System, 2012-2014 (2015)).

The United States is facing a growing problem that shows no signs of slowing: sexual assaults on college campuses. Possible reasons for this epidemic are explained by Janet Napolitano, the current president of the University of California. She describes that “young adults live independently and in close proximity to one another for the first time” while attending college (Napolitano 387). The college setting provides students with opportunities to take advantage of one another. As a result, sexual assaults have become an issue across universities in the United States.

Recent headlines have highlighted the fact that rape culture is prevalent in our society, most noticeably on college campuses. To understand why this is a social issue we first have to understand what rape culture entails. Rape culture is a set of assumptions that reinforces male sexual aggression and disregards violence against females (Hildebrand & Najdowski, 2015, p. 1062). Simplified, it is an environment where sexual violence is normalized and most of the time excused. One out of five females in the United States are sexually assaulted by a male at some point in their lifetime (Hildebrand & Najdowski, 2015, p. 1059) and college aged females are four times more likely to be a victim of rape than any other age group (Burnett et al.,

I still believe that no matter race, sex, or success of the defendant, a sexual assault is a crime and should be treated as such. What I used to believe but has now changed for me is that with all the safety precautions that college campus take to maintain a safe environment, such as blue lights and campus guardians, you would suspect a college to be

Jazmin Mcdonnell PSYCH 300 Tues 6:30-9:20pm The Hunting Ground I never thought of rape epidemic as how it was described in the movie, because that word is usually connected to deadly diseases, or out breaks. And it’s sad because being that I am woman I was always aware of sexual assault and how often it occurs to women in general but maybe its because unlike other deadly diseases that get broadcasted on every news cast imaginable, the subject of rape, or sexual assault is merely brushed under the table. This movie really opened my eyes to it all, you see because it’s the cultural norm I feel not only in America but around the world that rape or even sexual assault for that matter to not be taken serious in the eyes of the media, only

I also learned from the film that sexual offenders are not always the strangers hiding behind the bushes but people that the survivors of sexual assault knew or had had a relationship with. From this unit I also took away that sexual assault cases are treated objectively in court, based on the facts, and that the survivors, who are mostly but not always woman, are blamed for the assault questioning how much they had to drink or what they were wearing. Rape is extremely unreported to or unrecorded by police and rape kits almost never get

On February 7, 1978, the 19-year-old student that attended the College of William and Mary reported that she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint. She informed police investigators that on that afternoon she went to her “fiancé’s apartment in Williamsburg, Virginia after her morning class was cancelled. When she attempted to enter the apartment with her arms full of groceries, she was then confronted

It looks scary how vulnerable the survivor can be at the time of assault. However, as long as the matter of violence is associated, the students at college campuses are safer than their non-college mates. Some training and education has been administrated to the students for awareness about the violence and sexual assaults. Even, with increased training and education, most of the college campuses have much longer way to go for decreasing the intensity and number of assaults and the incidents have immense negative impact on the society and people around us.

Title IX has become a prevalent topic of discussion over the past few months. Last September Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education announced that she would be working on rescinding the Obama-era Title IX guidance and implicating a new interim guidance. The #MeToo Movement, a campaign aimed at supporting survivors of sexual violence began taking on momentum due to accusations towards Harvey Weinstein and numerous top-tier celebrates. Recently, former USA Gymnastics team doctor for Michigan State, Larry Nassar has been found guilty for decades of abuse on young students. A scandal that can cost MSU millions for concealing reports and allegations of victims.

The first thing colleges can do is develop and give every student an official, written policy statement about sexual misconduct. Every student should be handed the official document, and then it should be explained in detail. Next, the college should establish a network of services like emergency rooms or policeman on campus at all times. This should be done because if the crime can’t be stopped, at least there should be someone to help the victim right away. The police should be there to prevent the crime or to punish the assailant after.