Documentary takes a hard look at campus rape issue

How antiquated is the moral code of some colleges and universities in the United States? In The Hunting Ground, a gut-wrenching documentary about the epidemic of sexual assault on campuses of higher education across the country, the answer presented is ridiculously clear: very, very backward. The exposé combines a series of vivid first-person interviews and follows a group of survivors as they struggle to both return to normal university life and pursue justice in systems that seem to work against them at every turn.

According to experts cited by the film, false reporting of sexual assault accounts for only 2 to 10 percent of the charges, meaning that more than 90 percent of reported assaults turn out to be true. The Hunting Ground then raises the question: Why do administrators on campuses across the country encourage young women not to report, or worse, question them intensively about their drinking habits and clothing worn on the night of the attack?

The Hunting Ground is firmly based in fact and statistic, and that data begin to tell a story the film doesn’t have to. Given statistics that show one in four women will be sexually assaulted in college, The Hunting Ground begs viewers to wonder why 40 percent of colleges reported no rapes in 2012. Even more perplexing, it muses, why did 95 percent of college presidents say that their universities appropriately handle sexual assaults? While the answers are left hanging, the allegations and calls for a solution are not. Though the presidents of Harvard University, University of Notre Dame, Florida State University, the University of North Carolina, UC Berkeley, Occidental College and Saint Mary’s College all turned down requests to be interviewed for this film, many victims of their poor policies came forward.

At the heart of The Hunting Ground is a mission to humanize and make real the horrific toll that sexual assault has on victims, a toll so high that 88 percent of victims decline to report their experience to authorities at both their universities and the police, according to research cited by the film.

When both their attackers and the University of North Carolina, whom they trusted to protect them, victimized them instead, Andrea Pino and Annie Clark fought back after researching Title IX, the federal law that protects students from gender discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funding. When their complaint against the university attracted national attention from survivors who were inspired to tell their stories, Pino and Clark created a support network dedicated to shining a light on an issue kept in the dark for too long, co-founding the organization End Rape on Campus.

For Kamilah Willingham, a law student at Harvard, the difficulty of achieving justice came when Harvard allowed her attacker to remain on campus despite what she viewed as clear evidence of his guilt. Willingham’s story is part of a larger inconsistency revealed by the film: The punishment levied for perpetrators of sexual assault pales in comparison to the punishment their victims face. The Hunting Ground describes single-day suspensions, apology letters and even one perpetrator who was asked to volunteer at a rape crisis center as just a few examples of the lack of seriousness universities give to the issue.

The Hunting Ground takes aim at two institutions that it alleges have long been protected from serious scrutiny by universities: fraternities and athletics. With regard to the Greek system, in a shocking series of interviews with students from UC Berkeley, University of Tulsa and even USC, students describe a university culture that they feel doesn’t warn them of the risks posed by specific fraternities, and even worse, protects those fraternities from serious scrutiny. According to the film, darker financial incentives may be at play: In 2013, it reports that fraternity alumni were responsible for 60 percent of donations to universities of over $100 million.

When Florida State quarterback (and eventual Heisman Trophy winner) Jameis Winston was accused of sexual assault two years ago, the film describes how the FSU administration quickly came to his defense. Winston’s accuser, Erica Kinsman, publicly speaks out about the entire process in the film for one of the first times ever. When she accused Winston of assault two years ago, she says she entered the scary world of a university bent on protecting its reputation, and above all, it’s football record.

According to the film, FSU is not the alone. It describes disproportionate punishment (and even suspensions that it alleges were intentionally levied after, and not before, major competitions) at the University of Oregon, Notre Dame and University of Missouri.

The Hunting Ground will radically change the conversation about sexual assault at campuses in the United States. It challenges universities to do two things. First, it urges them to radically change the way they deal with survivors who report sexual assault. Second, it implores them to inform students of the danger posed by specific fraternities and other off-campus locations where students gather.

The film will make a splash with ripple effects across every campus it features — but it remains to be seen whether those campuses will listen.