Film Analysis: The Hunting Ground

In The Hunting Ground, there are four schools: Harvard, UNC, Notre Dame, and Florida state that prove the main themes of the film. The main themes of the film were: fear for safety, isolation and overcoming, and lack of legal and academic protection and/or investigation. These themes transform college environments from institutions for higher learning, to hunting grounds for sexual predators with no fear of repercussions. As time moves forward with no legal or academic punishments for these sexual assaults on college campuses, behaviors become learned as a part of the process. For the offender, it will be known that they can not only act in these manners, but if they are involved in an organization such as Greek life and/or athletics, they

For an environment to be considered a hunting ground, it must have three elements that interact at the same time. This is called routine activities theory. In routine activities theory, you need “motivated offenders, suitable targets, and capable guardianship” (Victimology: The Essentials, 28). Social learning at college campuses can create motivated offenders and if victims do not take precautions, they may become suitable targets. The main concern for offenders would to find targets who do not have capable guardianship. In the documentary, an offender described ways to achieve this by: using alcohol because it is easier to overpower victims, choosing their victim ahead of time, and going to fraternity parties to choose victims at because “no one is keeping an eye on them” which makes isolation and sexual assault easier. For example, “a victim from UNC was at a party with friends where she met a male she assumed was a nice guy. Later during the party, he started pulling her towards the bathroom and away from her friends. He then slammed her head against floor and raped her” (The Hunting Ground, 2015). This victim and another from UNC created the Courage Project and more women started to speak out about their sexual assaults. The university had “at least 100 reports with zero perpetrators and was aware of repeat sexual assault offender of three different girls” (The Hunting Ground,