The
statistics currently stand that 1 in 5 young women will have been sexually
assaulted by the time they graduate college in America. 1 in 5. The
Hunting Ground (2015) is a documentary which illuminates the
prevalence of sexual violence at American universities through the
heart-wrenching stories of victims who have been overlooked by their
educational institutions as a means of upholding a prestigious and
untarnished image. I have never felt so shaken up after watching a
documentary as I did after watching The Hunting Ground.
Following
the aftermath of their assaults, The Hunting Ground‘s young women
and men describe the symptoms of their trauma - nightmares, panic attacks,
self-harm, and suicide attempts. Many of the victims eventually decide to speak
out, and the responses from university administrators is at
times unbearable, the most crude and unbelievable response one of the
girls received being “rape is like a football game. If you look back on
the game, what would you do differently?” So many of the young women were
questioned on how they were led to be in a position of rape, and even
more scarring is the amount of young women that left
administrators' offices feeling as if it were their
wrongdoing.
One of
The Hunting Ground's biggest accomplishments is its exposure of the great lie
and deception of college fraternities. Fraternities, for decades, have been
nothing other than a haven for raping, hazing, drugging, and horrible
mistreatment of women. Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE), one of America's largest
domestic fraternities, which is known as "Sexual Assault Expected" by
numerous people on university campuses, have been cult-like hellholes for many
years. The documentary does not sugarcoat the sickening behaviour that runs extensively
at these places. And rightly so – vulnerability is not the cause of this
issue; mistreatment of a person is.
It is
a timely and important subject, and that has become even more clear since the
recent Stanford assault case. As a young woman, watching this documentary shone
light on an issue which is far too prevalent in society today, and has made
even more real the lack of support that vulnerable young people are receiving
from the institutions that have some power to monitor the issue at
hand. What the documentary does most poignantly is to present the issue
through survivors' first-person testimonies, impacting their audience. Something needs
to change, and this documentary leaves you with greater awareness and
knowledge, feeling confronted and affected, and urging for change. I could not
recommend this more.
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