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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNew film gives chilling account of sexual assault on college campuses
http://www.si.com/college-football/2015/02/26/hunting-ground-sexual-assault-college-jameis-winston-florida-state-notre-dameSexual assaults on college campuses have reached alarming levels and the issue has drawn the attention of Congress and even President Obama himself. The latest research indicates that one in five college women will be sexually assaulted and as many as 90% of reported assaults are acquaintance rapes. It is believed that more than 100,000 college students will be sexually assaulted during the current school year. Nowhere is the deck stacked more against sexual assault victims than in college athletics. In just the last few years alone there have been cases at Florida State, Michigan, Oregon, Vanderbilt and Missouri.
All of this is a backdrop to a harrowing new film that premiers in theaters on Friday in New York City and Los Angeles. The Hunting Ground is a jarring exposé that shines a bright light on the epidemic number of sexual assaults taking place on college campuses each year.
The Hunting Ground features a group of survivors who faced harsh retaliation and harassment for reporting that they had been raped. The film focuses on institutional cover-ups and the brutal backlash against survivors at campuses such as Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USC and the University of California-Berkeley, among others.
Some of the most vexing stories featured in the film involve women who were assaulted by athletes. While The Hunting Ground isnt all about sports, the most dramatic moment in the film occurs two-thirds of the way through when the woman who accused former Florida State quarterback Jameis Winstonwho after a strong showing in last weeks Combine is projected by many to be the No. 1 pick in this springs NFL draftappears and tells her story publicly for the first time. The woman, who is named in the film but SI.com has chosen to protect her identity, is shown on camera and gives her life-changing account of what she says happened the night in December 2012 she left a Tallahassee bar with Winston.
A high school honor student who planned to attend medical school, the woman is articulate and attractive. She looks like the girl next door, a person you would trust to babysit your children. It is uncomfortable to watchyet impossible to look awaywhen she describes being beneath Winston on his bathroom floor, repeatedly telling him no before being physically overpowered.
Yet this asshole was protected by FSU and the city police and will be rewarded by being a first round draft pick.
prayin4rain
(2,065 posts)how this is still such a rampant problem! For it to be continuing at this level in this day and age is a disgrace. We need to craft a culture that does not tolerate it or the factors that contribute to it.
radicalliberal
(907 posts)Unfortunately, this has been true for decades, if not generations.
Pity any rape victim who "gets in the way" of a football program. Winning is everything!
prayin4rain
(2,065 posts)radicalliberal
(907 posts)I have no doubt he's received death threats for daring to speak out.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Their bodies are seen as part of the privileges they earned. And are used to breed the next generation of warriors. This is an ancient system. ISIS and the MRAs show it's still functioning today.
The imagery and music that accompany football are an example of that mentality, with drums like marching bands, and the themes of triump and crushing the losers, the weak or the feminine.
It's training men for what some see as their ultimate destiny in the world as all out warriors, not the civilized type regulations impose. There is a need to be physically active to know oneself and to be social as a survival skill.
That is healthy. But there's a dark underside people don't want to confront. The fact that millions are paid, that no questions are allowed on the lavish spectacle of the games, hearkening back the days of Rome, is part of the game of dominance.
I don't believe humanity will change its ways as I once did. The proof lies all around us, in history and current events. It's not for nothing that the women of the world have been leery of many things. They don't have the freedom warriors do.