The Hunting Ground

I attended the event hosted by Spiders Against Sexual Assault and Violence (SASAV) on Monday, November 18th. They were hosting a film screen “The Hunting Ground”. The movie “The Hunting Ground” is a documentary exposing the underlying sexual assault culture on college campuses across the country, along with the institutional cover-ups and the social retaliation that followed.  The documentary begins by giving the stories of sexual assault and rape survivors and the different ways they were able to cope. It then delves into the reporting process and the administrative side of the issue.  One of the interviewed administrators said that they purposefully made the process difficult, so they do not have as many reports and to “artificially keep their numbers low”. Another discussed how the top priority of the school was to protect its reputation and the protecting the students was second. Many of the schools did not properly punish those convicted of the offense by only giving them a warning or a $25 fine. One example given was Stanford University and from 1996-2013, there was a total of 259 reports of assaults and only 1 expulsion during this time. This is one of the primary reasons why survivors feel as though reporting will not help their cause. They also frequently suffer from victim blaming as they are accused of wearing something revealing, drinking too much, asking for it, and not saying no enough times. Sadly, sexual violence has become a part of the college culture, from fraternities to sports, as 1 in 4 girls experiences this. As a society, we need to do better to address these issues and work to fix them. The problem not only lies with the perpetrators but also with the universities’ administrations who refused to acknowledge and properly hold the assaulters responsible.