The Hunting Ground

[thir]

I recently came upon the film "The Hunting Ground", and since I am not an American it prompts me to ask some questions. The film attempts to prove that in some well known universities in the US there is a rape culture, mostly rooted in freshmen organisations, and an absolute politic in the universities administrations to hush this up for economical reasons.

I would like to ask the Americans if you believe this is true, why is yes and why not if not, and why on earth universities?

I would like to ask non-American if such is the case in your countries.

[Mr.Quirt]

The movie "hunting ground " I haven't seen. But the reputation which you posted that it promotes is false and of political origin. One of our political parties claims to be more feminist than the other. To further that claim it maintains that women are victimized in various ways. Among the ways are claims that a rape culture is widespread. It is a false notion intended to garner voting support by pretending to fight such discrimination. The effort began when it took the position that abortion must be available on demand, denying the child any voice in the matter. This appeared to work, so that party began to champion all sorts of womans' grievances.

The Obama Department of Education went so far as to issue "guidance" that claimed that men accused of sex offenses must not be given the right to acquittal in the absence of proof "beyond a reasonable doubt", or even in the absence of "clear and convincing evidence". The legal criterion it demanded was a "preponderance of the evidence". Worse, Men were denied the right to counsel and the right to confront the witnesses against them. The Education Department was acting entirely without legal authority to regulate issues of this kind in colleges. It made the spurious claim that a federal law making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex required this kind of regulation. This has resulted in a generation of men proportionally less inclined to attend college than are women.

The Secretary of Education in the present administration is expected to remedy the situation by countermanding the illegally issued guidance. However it will be difficult to redress the damage that college "kangaroo courts" have already done.

[js207]

From a non-US perspective, it's quite bizarre - universities having their own "police" forces and even "courts"?! Ludicrous. I work at a university in the UK; if anyone is raped there, it's a matter for the (real) police and the (real) courts, not university security or internal procedures!

Apparently the statistics don't fit the narrative of "campus rape culture" either - created by dodgy methodology (including asking women about their sexual experiences and defining some answers as "rape", even when the vast majority of respondents didn't classify the event as rape themselves; the survey authors themselves deny that the claimed conclusion, about 1 in 5 women being "raped", is valid!) - official government statistics put it just below 2%, with students less likely than non-students to be victims!

TL;DR: Utterly fraudulent statistics, used to push a baseless agenda - something it seems that film seeks to further, rather than being honest and informative. (That, or there's a vast conspiracy encompassing the majority of the "victims" themselves...)

Sources: Campus Rape and Sexual Assault Researchers on 1-in-5 | Time.com and https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf