Rape and sexual assault have been a growing culture in American universities and colleges, where victims are silenced by the administration, culprits are walking free and society blames the victims for something that was out of their control. A fact that came out of the documentary, The Hunting Ground, is that universities unjustly try to keep themselves out of the circumstances of sexual abuse as they are tremendously concerned with their goodwill rather than the well-being of rape and sexual assault victims. The movie provides us with many real-life examples of women and men being raped, and justice not being granted or delayed for comprehensive-time being. The very haunting truth about almost all rape cases, whether reported or not, according to the documentary and various statistics shown in it, is that rape cases fall in favor of the rapist or assailant.
For instance, let’s see the Stanford swimmer, Brock Turner, who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman. As a punishment for this heinous crime, he only got six months of jail time as any longer sentence would be damaging to his career. Do you think six months is enough for anyone who sexually assault another person and ruins his/her life? There are many examples like such where the assailant gets minimal punishment to serve like; probation, written warnings, community service, etc. which are very inconsequential, that don’t even have a dent on this huge ongoing problem in the universities and universities have an immense part in it.
Almost all universities pledge to take grave actions towards the sexual offenders but the many stories from The Hunting Ground say otherwise. For example, the football player who allegedly assaulted a female student was highly admired irrespective for his crimes since he was the face of the college football team. After DNA tests confirming that the crime was true, universities shrugged the case off and dismissed it altogether. The only two concerns of all universities are fundraising and the goodwill and reputation of the universities in the publics’ eyes.
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To achieve these two concerns, the administration goes way too far and have a silencing effect on the victims of the crimes. Universities must maintain a brand to attract future prospective students and to do so, universities must disregard any sexual assault case, whether true or not, to protect the interest of the universities. If the cases of rape come to limelight, crime statistics goes up, the campus would be tagged as “rape campus”, that would do no good to the universities. So, they try to silence the victims by intimidating them, discouraging them to report any case, making themselves as the reason for rape, creating hard and long red tape process for hearings and disciplinary actions. Universities need to be haven where all students, irrespective of their sex, gender, sexual orientations, race, etc. gain knowledge without any terror of sexual assaults and have confidence that even if these cases happen, there is the college administration that they can turn into whenever they are comfortable to.
Universities, today are not only a source of education, but also a big source of revenue to the administration. Universities are brand and rapes are epidemic for brands. Universities will cross any boundary to protect its brand and source of income, even if it means protecting criminals. The movie exposes two establishments that offer generous financial aids to universities; frats and sports program. The statistics shows that these two organizations are home for a good quantity of sexual hunters. Colleges need to protect the members of these organizations, as any harm to them would negatively affect the financial benefits of the universities. These overlapping interests of universities create a huge problem in solving these cases. Until and unless, the universities are not concerned with the inflow of money that these organizations bring into, justice cannot be served. If money can buy good lawyers and silence of the administration, this vicious problem will keep on going.
This movie has certainly moved me to act even how small it is, or it will be. Growing up in a culture that worships a woman as goddess, the movie painted a harsh picture of reality to me. I knew rapes and sexual assaults were problem in every walk of life, but I never thought the magnitude of it would be grave and tremendous. After the movie, I called a couple of my friends to watch the movie and to be very vigilant all the time. The movie made me dig more about the two duo survivors, turned activists, Andrea Pino and Annie Clark, featured in the movie. You can find many videos on YouTube about the positives they have been doing around the country. They also founded endrapeoncampus.org whose mission states, “works to end campus sexual violence through direct support for survivors and their communities; prevention through education; and policy reform at the campus, local, state, and federal levels”. These two ladies have been a source of inspiration for many voiceless people.
