Sexual Assault In The Hunting Ground

The Hunting Ground, directed by Kirby Dick was a great eye opener and was amazing to watch to get a realistic view of what goes on throughout college campuses. As the film continued on following the lives of several undergrad students who had been sexually assaulted it got me to think, why? Even after watching it twice I still was in shock by the endless amounts of victim blaming these prestige’s schools were putting on their students.

1. Sexual Assault on campus has become an epidemic, for many different reasons but one major factor that contributes is when a sexual assault occurs on a University and nothing is done. By allowing the perpetrator to get away with his or her crime your “Okaying” them and in a way giving approval which can lead

The level of hurt that can come from ignoring a sexual assault and that it actually happened can affect someone negatively. It can even get them to thinking bad about themselves and it can turn to the worse fast. There were many flaw’s/fallacies that were committed pertaining to these sexual assaults on campus.

• Belief Perseverance: One example can be based upon the actual number of false reports being lower then what we would think, yet the University’s continues to blame and prosecute too many innocent people rather than believing them.

• Overconfidence Phenomenon: The film featured Universities claiming they protect their students and their number one priority is their safety, yet when students were reporting their sexual assaults they were blamed and the types of questions were cruel. One student even stated, “my rape was bad but the way I was treated was worse.” Therefor the University has a tendency to believe that they are more accurate then they actually are to “show off” for the public’s eye.

• Confirmation Bias: A perfect example would pertain to when the victims of sexual assault from the University of North Carolina stuck together, they bonded when no one else would listen and believe them. They sought out each other and many others around the United States as the film continued until they had proven their point. The two women, Andrea and Annie just kept moving forward while avoiding those that

Although the rate of reported sexual assaults are high, the rates of discipline are zero to none. Why is that you may ask, well for starters most Universities avoid lawsuits as the film “The Hunting Ground” reported that “crime stats are as low as possible so it doesn’t detract applicants from the university”. Four other reasons that the film discussed are:

• False Reporting: Although The Hunting Ground previewed the percentage of false reporting to be very low; (roughly 2-8%) it is still a problem and does occur and does affect the sexual assault ratio. One of the presidents of a University said, that they take false reporting seriously and that for them it one major contributor to why they don’t follow through on sexual assault cases as soon as their reported because they spend more time making sure its not a false report.

• Keep their reputation of a safe place and community: It is known that if the parents are happy with the universities the students are, a part of the decision relies on the parents approval. If there are a large amount of sexual assaults and crime rates the parent is more than likely to try to rule out that specific University or college therefor keeping low numbers become