Prior to screenings of “The Hunting Ground,” the Ohio University administration issued a video that denies the existence of rape culture at OU.
Last week, The Athena Cinema held several showings of “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary that details the truly appalling manner in which sexual assault cases are handled on college campuses. The stories and statistics shared in “The Hunting Ground” make clear that most university administrations and police forces have proven completely incompetent in handling sexual assault. Despite this, an absurd 95 percent of university administrations claim to handle sexual assault effectively. The administration here at Ohio University is among that 95 percent.
Prior to each screening of the film, the audience received a message “from the Ohio University community.” This included both legitimate resources from the Survivor Advocacy Program and OU’s Title IX Coordinator, as well as outright propaganda from Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones and Police Chief Andrew Powers. Hall-Jones and Powers clearly attempt, in the video, to make members of the Bobcat family feel safe, but they also use the video as an opportunity to exempt OU from the ties between corporate universities and rape-culture, as revealed in “The Hunting Ground.” Therefore, despite the video’s expressed seriousness and concern, it actually does an excellent job of perpetuating rape culture on this campus by denying its very existence.
Powers may say that sexual assault cases are among the department's top priorities, but the numbers don’t lie. Eleven of the 12 reports of sexual assaults submitted to OUPD in 2014 are STILL unresolved, and the only one that was resolved did NOT result in a conviction. Pair that with the fact that rape accusations are only falsely reported around 2-8 percent of the time, and we have to ask what this says about the efficacy of our university’s police force.
Furthermore, it is the main function of the university administration, including Hall-Jones, to bring money into this university. And one of the best ways that the university does this is through its facilitation of hyper-masculine spaces.
According to statistics cited in “The Hunting Ground,” 60 percent of donations to universities nationwide come from fraternity alumni (see: Steve Schoonover). So, even though fraternity brothers are three times more likely to commit rape or acts of sexual violence than other men, fraternities keep the money flowing into this university and are all but completely untouchable as a result. THIS is what we mean by rape culture, and THIS is what Jenny Hall-Jones and Chief Powers outright deny in their video.
Even if we here at OU were aware of a specific fraternity that operates as a well known hub for rape and sexual violence, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to do anything about it. We could maybe succeed in getting that fraternity suspended if we went through a complex and morally questionable process of acquiring “evidence.” But ultimately it is in the university’s best interest to make this process difficult, and it is in the interest of the universities as well as the very wealthy fraternities to silence public outcry against these hyper-masculine spaces. The university could lose major donors if a frat was suspended or kicked off campus, and, as “The Hunting Ground” shows, that is what truly worries the university — its donors. The corporate university is far more interested in the acquisition of capital than it is in its protection of its individual students or the dismantling of rape culture.
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I truly think that both Jenny Hall-Jones and maybe even Chief Powers are working hard to foster an environment in which survivors are taken seriously, but they are definitely NOT fostering an environment that dismantles rape culture. If the administration were really serious about combating a culture that breeds domination and sexual violence, exclusively male spaces would be subject to constant investigation or banned entirely. But, at the end of the day, admins are just not willing to put their jobs on the line by critiquing the financial institutions that keep rape culture, and this university, running.
To begin addressing rape culture here, the Ohio University Student Union demands a public, third-party sexual violence survey to better evaluate how rape culture manifests on OU’s campus. This would be a good first step for Powers and Hall-Jones to take, if they really want to get a grasp on the current situation.
Daniel Kington is a sophomore studying English and a Student Union organizer. He is also an officer of the Sierra Student Coalition. What did you think of the university’s response video? Email him at dk982513@ohio.edu.
