Kirby Dick - The Hunting Ground: The Inside Story of Sexual Assault on American College Campuses

Copyright 2016 by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Hot Books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Hot Books and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.hotbookspress.com.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photo credit Richard Davis

ISBN: 978-1-5107-0574-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0578-4

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

by Constance Matthiessen

T he Hunting Ground , the powerful documentary by filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, begins with exuberant video clips of high school seniors learning that theyve been accepted by their top-choice colleges. As Pomp and Circumstance surges in the background, one girls face goes from dread to stunned joy, another dissolves in tears, a third screams and leaps to her feet, joining her family in a giddy dance around the dining room.

Its a dream most parents cherish: sending their child to college. The dream features erudite professors, inspiring classes, and friendships to last a lifetimeall set against a backdrop of stately buildings and quads shaded by graceful trees.

On its face, Annie Clarks experience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is one every parent would wish for their child. I really had a good time there, she recalls early in the film. I learned a lot. I loved my professors. The first few weeks I made some of my best friends, and were still really close to this day.

Clark, an athlete and North Carolina native, has a round, open face and a 1,000-watt smile. But her smile fades and her face tightens as she finishes, almost matter-of-factly, But two of us were sexually assaulted before classes even started.

Campus Epidemic

The Hunting Ground tells the stories of dozens of students whose college experience is marred by sexual assault. The films director, Kirby Dick, and producer, Amy Ziering, are the team that made the documentary The Invisible War , an expos of sexual assault in the military that sparked national outrage, won two Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. That film compelled the Pentagon to change policies and was the catalyst for dozens of major reforms passed by Congress and signed into law.

When the filmmakers screened The Invisible War at colleges and universities, students repeatedly approached them to talk about sexual violence on their campuses. Dick and Ziering heard so many disturbing stories that they shelved the project they were working on and started making The Hunting Ground instead. What followed was two years of in-depth investigative work. Along with their team, they visited dozens of campuses, conducted hundreds of interviews, and tracked a fledgling movement of courageous student activists. The result is a powerful and frightening portrait of sexual violence on campuses across the countryfrom party schools to the most exclusive bastions of the Ivy League.

The statistics are stunning: More than 20 percent of women and more than 5 percent of men who attend college are sexually assaulted.

Fraternities and Athletics

Whats behind this widespread sexual violence? The Hunting Ground highlights two fixtures of campus life often associated with sexual assaults: fraternities and athletics.

Fraternities, which today are the center of the social scene at many colleges, are also the setting for many sexual assaults at colleges around the country. While some fraternities foster a spirit of community and inclusiveness that benefits their members and their schools, others perpetuate a macho bro culture that encourages binge drinking, misogynistic attitudes, and a pack mentality. This fierce loyalty among fraternity members often works to keep sexual assault cases under wraps, so its difficult to say how many attacks occur at college fraternities each year, but, according to insurance reports, sexual assaults comprise the second-highest number of claims against fraternities.

College athletes have been linked to a number of highly-publicized campus assaults; a recent notable case is the accusations of rape against Florida States quarterback Jameis Winston. While the vast majority of athletes would never assault anyone and are horrified by these crimes, research shows that a small minority of athletes (4 percent) commit a disproportionately high number of assaults (19 percent). In many of these cases, the accused athlete is protected by the school and its athletic program because of his importance to the team. As educator and former NFL quarterback Don McPherson tells Dick and Ziering: I really do believe the vast majority of student athletes are worthy of our admiration. But when you have 18- to 22-year-old kids who are celebrities it creates a toxic environment for a lot of bad behavior. Theres a multibillion-dollar industry that wraps around these young men, and if you dont think that theyre part of a culture of entitlement, just look at the fanfare thats around college football.

While these three factors play a role in many sexual assaults, they dont explain why these incidents keep occurring at college after college with mind-numbing regularity. Watching The Hunting Ground, you realize that campus assaults keep happening because no one is stopping them: Perpetrators keep committing these crimes, quite simply, because they can.

Protecting a Brand

In fact, colleges have done little to stop violence on their campuses, as The Hunting Ground (both the film and this book) make clear. When Annie Clark reported her rape to an administrator at the University of North Carolina, the woman replied, Rape is like a football game, Annie, and if you look back on the game what would you do differently in that situation?

Other college students report similarly victim-blaming responses from the college administrators they turn to for help:

What were you wearing?

What were you drinking? How much did you have to drink?

Did you say no? How many times did you say no? How did you say it?

Over the course of The Hunting Ground , students assault reports are repeatedly ignored. Or the investigation is stalled. Or the punishment is a perfunctory slap on the wrist. At some colleges, perpetrators have been given ludicrously small fines, or assigned a paper to write. At Stanford University, to give just one example cited in the film, 259 sexual assaults were reported between 1996 and 2013, but only one student faced expulsion. In fact, according to research by The Huffington Post, less than one-third of students found guilty of campus sexual assault are expelled. Nationwide, far more students are expelled for cheating than for sexual violence.

A 2014 report commissioned by Senator Claire McCaskill found that countless campus sexual assaults are never even investigated. Researchers found, for example, that 40 percent of colleges had not conducted a single assault investigation in five years. In addition, More than 21 percent of the nations largest private institutions conducted fewer investigations than the number of incidents they reported to the Department of Education, with some institutions reporting as many as seven times more incidents of sexual violence than they have investigated, the report found.