One in 5 women in college will be sexually assaulted. That’s the woman next to you in your sociology class. That is 5 to 10 of the women in your sorority or 50 to 100 of the women in your graduating class.
There’s a reason this statistic has been the cause for comparing college campuses to a hunting ground.
Colleges have been allowing women on college campuses to become objects of prey, thereby breeding a hunting ground by not having strict punishment and covering up sexual assaults.
I make these accusations on the basis of the documentary film, “The Hunting Ground.” The film reveals, “an endemic system of institutional cover-ups, rationalizations, victim-blaming and denial that creates perfect storm conditions for predators to prey with impunity,” according to thehuntinggroundfilm.com.
As I sat and watched “The Hunting Ground,” I couldn’t help but become enraged by the victims’ stories and the universities that did everything to cover their stories up. It absolutely infuriated me.
Erica Kinsman’s story in particular stood out to me. She was a student at Florida State University at the time of her assault on December 7, 2012.
“There was virtually no investigation at all, either by the police or the university” for Kinsman’s case, according to The New York Times.
I was able to see the amount of time and effort that took place in her investigation from a timeline shown in “The Hunting Ground.” From the day she reported the rape, committed by a Florida State University student and football player Jameis Winston, it took nearly two years for a hearing — which took place December 2014.
On December 21, 2014, Winston was found not responsible for raping Kinsman, despite the DNA found on her clothing matching Winston’s and his violation of FSU’s student policy that requires verbal consent of sexual encounters.
The systemic effort that went against Kinsman in her pursuit of justice against her rapist for her assault is what enrages me the most.
Not only was she initially instructed to “think twice” before filing a report upon meeting with Tallahassee police officer Scott Angulo, but she was later told, “this is a huge football town.
You really should think long and hard if you want to press charges,” as well, as reported by the Washington Post.
The police then did nothing for 10 months. Once they did act, she received death threats and was forced to drop out of school due to the hatred she received from her accusations against FSU’s star-freshman quarterback.
The story of Erica Kinsman not only shows the precedence that a college’s reputation and its college athletes hold over the lives of sexual assault victims, but how meaningless the victims lives truly are to these colleges.
And the scary fact is that her case is only one of many across the US.
But all hope isn’t lost. “The Hunting Ground” has revealed the discrepancies of universities and highlighted the way for survivors to take back their lives and get justice through Title IX legal strategies. The film has also provoked new changes in laws in New York and California.
What you and I can do to evoke change in the way universities handle these cases is making sure they know we won’t stand for it.
I honestly don’t get their logic behind silencing the victims of sexual assault and freeing their assailants so as not to tarnish their reputation. What is tarnishing their reputation is their complete lack of morality and justice regarding human life.
We need to let them know that their skewed logic won’t be tolerated, and keep fighting for more change.
