The Hunting Ground

 

(thank you Dr.Kyburz for the cool imbedding trick)

I decided to watch The Hunting Ground for my documentary project because it is still very relevant in society, and in my life since I am a female on campus. Also recently, IU Bloomington and other colleges are still very recently covering up reports of sexual assault, in order to protect their fraternities, which made me ultimately choose this documentary to see how nothing has changed. 

I think one scene that particularly got to me was when the victims of on-campus sexual assault told their stories about when they had to tell their parents what happened. Everyone that told their story was extremely emotional and they felt so sorrowful for something that was never their fault. Just the idea of all these young women and men reluctantly telling their parents that they got violated in the most horrible way possible is heartbreaking, so to know that their colleges dismissed them and made them feel at fault makes me so angry. To watch these students express their vulnerability and pain to their parents, and the helplessness feeling of their parents is very devastating. These scene made me feel such sorrow for the victims who deserved way more support, consoling, and protection then what their campus offered. But it also made me feel anger. I understand why they're sweeping this under the rug, but i absolutely do not support it. Pretending the problem does not exist is extremely toxic and harmful for the victims, and It does not protect future victims. Thousands of parents are trusting colleges to take protect their students, so to realize how negligent many colleges are towards this issue is very eye-opening and scary. 

One thing that definitely surprised me the most is the backlash the victims got. They were openly mocked, ridiculed, and received multiple threats just for speaking their truth. I was also heartbroken at the injustice the girl from Florida State faced. The fact that the police denied DNA testing and that dozens of people based her live because they cared about football so much was honestly really scary and concerning. While the documentary is from 2015, I still see some similarities to present day which is another thing that is very, very, concerning. 

The questions I find myself asking are for society as a whole. How did we get to the point where money is the end all be all, to the point where you're silencing rape victims in order to continue receiving checks from fraternity sponsors and other sponsors. Or to the point where two teen girls take it upon themselves to help thousands of other rape victims cope because their colleges don't provide the resources for it. Or the multiple victims who took their own lives due shaming and lack of help. I just don't understand why colleges would not tackle this prevalent issue head on, instead of pretending like it doesn't exist. 

I think including research from the summaries could take away from the main goal the documentaries are trying to get across. The purpose of most documentaries is to prove a point, or to display a problem that some people don't know about. My best guess is that they include research to prove the validity of their argument, but a majority of their argument is done through visuals and words. Perhaps research would clutter a summary of a documentary and stray away from the visual and audio points that the directors are trying to make.