One, stated by producer Amy Ziering during an appearance on The Daily Show, is that campus sexual assaults are not “just a date gone bad, or a bad hook-up, or, you know, miscommunication.” Instead, the filmmakers argue, campus rape is “a highly calculated, premeditated crime,” one typically committed by serial predators. The Hunting Ground is helping define the problem of campus sexual assault for policymakers, college administrators, students, and their parents.
This fall, it will get a further boost when CNN, a co-producer, plans to broadcast the film, broadening its audience. “If you have a daughter going to any college in America, you need to see The Hunting Ground,” the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough told his viewers in May. Gillibrand’s colleague Barbara Boxer, after the film’s premiere said, “Believe me, there will be fallout.” The film has received nearly universal acclaim from critics-the Washington Post called it “lucid,” “infuriating,” and “galvanizing”-and, months after its initial release, its influence continues to grow, as schools across the country host screenings. Senate Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, who makes a cameo appearance in the film, cites it as confirmation of the need for the punitive campus sexual assault legislation she has introduced. The film has been screened at the White House for staff and legislators.
The recent documentary The Hunting Ground asserts that young women are in grave danger of sexual assault as soon as they arrive on college campuses.