The film shows that many college officials were more concerned by minimizing rape statistics for their universities than by the welfare of the students, and contains interviews with college administrators who state that they were pressured into suppressing rape cases. The Hunting Ground presents multiple students who were sexually assaulted at their college campuses, and say that college administrators either ignored them or required that they navigate a complex academic bureaucracy to have their claims addressed. Īccording to Ziering, reactions from women on college campuses to Dick and Ziering's 2012 documentary The Invisible War, which focuses on the issue of sexual assault in the US military, inspired them to make a documentary about the subject of sexual assault at American colleges. The filmmakers have actively defended their work.
(Harvard was one of the institutions criticized for minimizing the issue of sexual assault and protecting an alleged perpetrator.) Among the issues raised by critics are the film's portrayal of one man as a rapist, while not disclosing that the university and the police had found him not responsible for the alleged sexual assault, and for use of controversial statistics. Ĭritics of the film, including writer Emily Yoffe and a number of Harvard Law School professors, have questioned The Hunting Ground's accuracy and objectivity. The use of Title IX in campus sexual assault cases became a model for universities across the country. Clark and Andrea Pino, two former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students who filed a Title IX complaint against UNC in response to their rapes while enrolled. Lady Gaga recorded an original song, " Til It Happens to You," for the film, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. It was released on Netflix in March 2016. The film was released on February 27, 2015, an edited version aired on CNN on November 22, 2015, and was released on DVD the week of December 1, 2015. Written and directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering, it premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The Hunting Ground is a 2015 American documentary film about the incidence of sexual assault on college campuses in the United States and the reported failure of college administrations to deal with it adequately.