In light of the continuing conversation and controversy regarding sexual assault on our campus, I decided to attend Ivy Film Festival’s March 2 screening of “The Hunting Ground” to gain further insight into the magnitude of this national collegiate epidemic. After a harrowing 90 minutes, silence fell as the audience shuffled out of the auditorium. I tried to digest what I had watched but struggled to absorb the issues that left me feeling mentally vexed and emotionally drained.
From the director of “The Invisible War” — the 2012 documentary investigating sexual assault in the U.S. military — Kirby Dick’s latest provocative film is an expose of sexual assault on college campuses across the country and the blistering wake of frustration, anger and contempt for all those touched by it. The film seemingly weaves personal narratives and startling statistics with a central story of a student-led Title IX case against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It brings to light key factors that have allowed a culture of sexual violence to become pervasive on college campuses: botched investigations and procedures, administrators in denial, the fraternity system and the collegiate athletics complex.
Every institution is touched by some aspect of these issues that, for too long, have been ignored or kicked down the road to solve at a later point. Like most conscientious students, I am ashamed and angered that sexual violence is a fixture of the American college experience and that victims are often neglected by policies and institutions.
But for anyone informed about the sexual assault epidemic and reform movement, the issues outlined by the film should not come as a surprise.
The interviewed survivors’ gripping tales of their experiences and the constant institutional failure from their universities, law enforcement and unsafe campus cultures made me increasingly frustrated. Each story and statistic was a sucker punch to the gut, leaving me to realize that any chance of changing the current climate was either hopeless or in need of a revolution. The layered presentation of the many-headed hydra of campus sexual assault was raw and incendiary — an approach that works when exposing issues for the first time. But the national conversation and reform movement is beyond this stage.
The film’s alarmist atmosphere is not the proper mechanism to encourage the momentum of reform in a positive manner. By only profiling a single Title IX complaint, the film ignores the Department of Education’s ongoing investigations of over 100 institutions, including Brown, and fails to present a more constructive side to the reform movement. I worry that like the other national plague of gun violence, the continuation of these crimes will gradually desensitize the public sentiment and gravity of campus sexual violence until it becomes an unsettling fact without hope for resolve. Or as the film encourages, we should let moral panic and paranoia influence excessive judgment and reactionary procedures based on radical biases. It is unabashedly polemic, but it nevertheless reminds us what wrongs need to be corrected.
I had a recent conversation with a friend who described the current conundrum on college campuses as a pendulum, swinging away from an indifferent and ineffective perspective to the opposite one of reactionary imprudence. And unfortunately, such a tone can shift even during the real-time deliberations, as in the current case involving an alleged drugging at a Phi Kappa Psi party and an alleged sexual assault. The hardest part now is waiting for the pendulum to equilibrate at an appropriate medium where the facts, the rights of involved parties and institutional procedure are not undermined by fear and public sentiment or influenced by those with power.
What I found most startling about the film was its inspection of university cover-ups and protection of institutional brands. Universities that prioritize maintaining their image despite perpetrated crimes and investigations often include major collegiate athletic powerhouses. There have been recent closed-door talks and conflict-of-interest cases involving athletes, such as former Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston. These cases are often not heard or dismissed due to universities’ desires to protect multimillion-dollar school brands and multibillion-dollar school sports industries. Beyond a school’s sporting arm, the images of upstanding legacy, academic success and student satisfaction are essential for institutions to maintain prominence and steady sources of funding from federal grants, alumni donors and waves of applicants.
But I never thought faculty members could be on the chopping block in a university’s quest to preserve its image. In an example from the film, an associate professor at Harvard was allegedly denied tenure for her vocal support of sexual assault victims and advocacy for reform at the university; she now has filed suit under Title IX. If it’s true that Harvard acted in this way, it demonstrates how purging educators who advocate for the welfare of students is now a means of protecting an image. It is dishonorable behavior and will hopefully remain isolated.
Despite new requirements in the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education that universities internally adjudicate sexual assault cases, it is difficult to understand if these institutions want — or should have — this ability. Though required by law, many if not all schools do not possess the proper legal resources and trained personnel to handle these cases according to the mandated federal standards for due process. But that does not allow for institutions to issue rulings that give justice to victims, only to accept later appeals and overturn their rulings, inviting back a once-convicted assaulter to potentially commit more crimes.
Universities’ backtracking on the sentences they deliver in sexual assault cases is particularly worrisome. In the name of image, universities can claim to abide by mandated standards, only to erase the hope of giving closure and safety for survivors and greater campus communities.
Presentation and stability are power. But denying victims justice or silencing the conversation is cowardly. The movement for sexual assault awareness and policy reform is at a watershed moment across the country, and “The Hunting Ground” keeps the fire for action burning bright. Echoing other peers, I support that the film and follow-up seminar discussions be a mandatory part of future first-year orientations to better present the different perspectives on this issue — that is, if the University is serious in stepping up as a real leader in the movement for reform.
Feel free to continue the conversation with Reid Secondo ’16 at reid_secondo@brown.edu.
