The Eastern Michigan University Women’s Resource Center held a screening of the “The Hunting Ground,” Monday.
The film is a documentary on sexual violence on American college campuses. It was released in February and follows the story of a cross section of victims in recent years.
From campuses like the University of Florida to University of California - Berkley to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, all of them are caught in the epidemic of sexual assaults that have come to light on college campuses across the nation.
The documentary showed the first major report on this topic was in 1987, calling to question the use of the term epidemic when talking about sexual assault.
According to Westat, an employee-owned statistical company, 25 percent of female college students are sexually assaulted in some way. In general, sexual assaults do not happen at random by strangers. Generally, they are either conducted by someone the victim knows or at a party.
The same Westat report said, "When asked what might happen when a student reports an incident of sexual assault or misconduct to a university official, about half say that it is very or extremely likely that the university will start an investigation."
But the documentary found contradictory evidence. When sexual assaults involve athletic departments, universities are often reluctant or actually set policy against prosecuting athletes. Several of the victims were discouraged from telling anyone else, the police especially.
One major problem victims in the documentary faced were a lack of resources. Pino and fellow sexual assault survivor Annie Clark found out that they were both victims and became friends. With a lack of official resources, they went looking on their own and found Title IX. The law states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
EMU does not lack resources, however. The Women's Resource Center is located in 356 Student Center. They can be contacted in emu_womenscenter@emich.edu.
Eastern Michigan University just hired Melody Werner as its Title IX Coordinator. Her office is at 370 Student Center and can be contacted at mwerner@emich.edu.
And the Department of Public Safety has a five-officer special victims unit. These officers, including panelists Detective Andrea Elliot, Lieutenant Daniel Karrick and Sergeant Diana Young have received special training to handle these cases. You can contact Elliot at aelliott@emich.edu, Young at diana.good@emich.edu and Karrick at dkarrick@emich.edu.
There was a student panel afterward. Karrick said he has not been pressured by the university to alter his investigation in any way in the three years he has been employed here.
