The Hunting Ground (Clara)

-
The documentary “The Hunting Ground” opened my eyes to the reality of sexual assault on college campuses. In the documentary the positions and challenged faced by survivors are juxtaposed with the priority and privilege often given to the assailant. Groups, such as End Rape on Campus, were created for the purpose of addressing the faults in the response system for reports of sexual assault as well as advocacy for victims. Andrea Pino and Annie Clark, who both attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, started the group End Rape on Campus with the purpose of advising and advocating for sexual assault victims at Universities across the United States using Title IX and the Clery act as evidence and support. The organization is a non-profit and receives their funding from donations made through their webpage. Some of the staff and founding staff members are frequent contributors and writers for major news outlets, so the organization is very publicized and gains a lot of exposure.


            Fraternities are a large component of the violence on college campuses. The majority of sexual assaults happen within a close proximity to Fraternities. I believe, that one way we can raise awareness to this problems so people can believe, empathize, and support survivors without having to experience the trauma themselves is for school officials to take the problem more seriously. It just takes one university to take the first step. Once one university admits to having a problem but also commits to doing something, parents won’t be deterred from said school. Instead, they will want to send their kid to a school that takes the safety and protection of their child very seriously. Having a problem, but not doing anything about it is denial. Schools have been in a constant state of denial to save face, but I believe this does more harm than good in multiple ways. First, It risks the safety of the students on campus every day that the problem isn’t addressed. Ignoring the problem makes parents worry about whether their students’ safety is being taken seriously. Additionally, universities rely on applications. Ignoring an epidemic does not encourage more students to apply. In act, it is the biggest deterrent I can think of.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Hunting Ground- Kira Cella

-
Image
Documentaries such as the hunting ground are very important when raising awareness around sexual assault and rape. They give victims the opportunity to tell their stories rather than having it twisted and changed by the offended, the media, or the news. The only person who truly knows what happened happened to them and how they felt about it, is the victim. When articles are written trying to refute the claims made by the victim, it leads to the public becoming skeptical, and decreases the believability of the victims claims. We need to ensure that articles like these are not written or published, because they are often from a point of view of a person who had no involvement in the incident. I feel we need to give everybody the benefit of the doubt.  A very minimal percentage of rape reportings are false, and rather than assuming all claims are false, we should assume all claims are true until absolutely proven false. The voice that is most important in these situations are the v...
Read more

Ezra Yang

-
Image
When the words, sexual assault, are said today, it’s frequently seen as a taboo word that can’t be spoken about. This is one reason that sexual assault survivors are unable to come out to people when they have been assaulted. This directly affects their experience when it comes to sexual assault. Women in both the documentary and the song had very difficult experiences with sexual assault. The way I saw it they didn’t want to talk about it not only because they didn't want to relive the experience, but also because they thought people would judge them for getting raped, which is absolutely absurd. And the fact that even if women report that they have been sexually assaulted, the perpetrator is rarely handled with correctly, which also contributes to the horrible experience that comes along with the horrible sexual assault. However, when they did talk about it, it seemed as if they’re experience with the assault got better because they knew they had people around them that supp...
Read more

The Hunting Ground (Trey and Sebastian)

-
Image
Sebastian Nalls & Trey Dawkins “It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.” -The Chicago Times The press has four essential roles: holding government leaders accountable to the people, publicizing issues that need addressing, educating citizens so they can make informed decisions, and connecting people with each other in civil society. The term “fake news” is loosely thrown around as a result of the election of President Donald Trump. It is often used to describe media outlets that don’t accurately depict the truth of a given situation, either by bias or blatant ignorance. However if something is “fake news”, is it actually news anymore? If the press is falsely educating citizens, are they fulfilling their job as the press? CNN Films produced the well known documentary called The Hunting Ground in 2015, hoping to educate individuals on the horrors of sexual assault on college campuses. Sexual assault and harassment on college campuses is a rampant...
Read more