rape

ISU Screens Exploration of Campus Sexual Crimes

Join Illinois State University Women's and Gender Studies Program and ISU Health Promotion and Wellness for the screening of the powerful documentary, The Hunting Ground on Sept. 19 at 5:15 p.m. in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center.

The film, which debuted at Cannes Film Festival is gaining strength through campus and community screenings across the country. As the conversation around campus sexual assault has been pushed to the forefront, this powerful film documents the rape crimes on U.S. college campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families.

The Hunting Ground presents multiple students who allege they were sexually assaulted at their college campuses, and that college administrators either ignored them or required them to navigate a complex academic bureaucracy to have their claims addressed. The film implies that many college officials were more concerned with minimizing rape statistics for their universities than with the welfare of the students, and contains interviews with college administrators who state they were pressured into suppressing rape cases. The film chiefly criticized actions (or lack thereof) by university administrations, including Harvard, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Amherst College, and Notre Dame, but it also examines fraternities such as Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

The narrative features Andrea Pino and Annie Clark, students at the University of North Carolina, who became campus anti-rape activists after being assaulted. In response to what they saw as an inadequate response from the university, they filed a Title IX complaint against The University of North Carolina on January 16, 2013 (along with three other students), and co-founded the group End Rape on Campus

A panel discussion will follow the screening.