Student Union members question if sexual assault is OUPD’s top priority.
After the Ohio University administration aired a video prior to screenings of The Hunting Ground last week, OU Student Union and members of F--kRapeCulture were “outraged,” Bobby Walker, a member of Student Union, said in an email.
In a collaboration between the two student groups, they released a video Monday in response to the university’s video.
OU Student Union’s nearly three-minute video directly addresses Interim Vice President for Student Affairs Jenny Hall-Jones and OU Police Chief Andrew Powers, who were featured in OU’s video.
The video urged students to feel comfortable reporting sexual misconduct to the university in the short video. OU’s Title XI Coordinator Inya Baiye and OU Survivor Advocacy Program Coordinator Delaney Anderson also spoke in the OU video.
“If sexual assault was OUPD’s top priority, why don’t you recognize that every sexual assault is an active threat to our community?” a Student Union member asks in the video. “Would 11 of the 12 reported sexual assaults to OUPD in 2014 still be unresolved?” asks another.
Walker, a member of OU Student Union, said in an email the group was outraged by the administration’s message. She said The Hunting Ground was meant to outline how university administrations fail when responding to sexual assault allegations on campus, and the university’s video demonstrated exactly what the documentary was trying to prove.
Walker, a junior studying women, gender and sexuality studies said universities across the country, including OU, have monetary ties that depend on keeping donors happy.
“If the university is seen as a happy healthy and safe place of learning, donors will keep donating, and the money will keep flowing,” Walker said in an email. “The presence of rapists and predators on their campuses tarnish that all so important image, and disincentivize universities from acknowledging that there is a rape crisis problem on their campuses.”
Walker said in an email the Student Union has made anti-rape culture a priority this year.
“In order for the administration to do something meaningful, something that strikes at the heart of the rape crisis, they would have to stop functioning as an administration, and start listening to students and sharing their power over our future,” Walker said in an email. “We aren’t very hopeful about that, so we’ll have to get creative.”
While there were those students who appreciated the university’s original message, there were others, like Alyssa Ensminger, who thought it was a “PR safety net.”
Ensminger, a member of F--kRapeCulture, said in an email the university’s video could keep people from looking critically at how the university handles sexual assault.
“This video — a video very intentionally shown right before the screening of The Hunting Ground — produces a very dangerous facade of the university to survivors who may think they can find help, comfort or justice in the university’s official reporting process,” Ensminger, a junior studying biological sciences, said in an email Thursday. “It encourages narratives that make it appear as though there is not a very serious issue at OU, both in the occurrence of sexual violence as well as in the way university officials are notorious for intentionally mishandling cases.”
The Post was unable to receive comment from Hall-Jones regarding the response video as of press time.
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