Source: The Hunting Ground
On February the 27th, the Gender and Sexualities Research Forum hosted a screening of The Hunting Ground – a powerful and harrowing documentary on sexual violence on US campuses and institutional failure to support affected students. Although a difficult watch, those attended were moved by the powerful stories told by survivors and by those campaigning for change. After the film, talks by Alison Phipps (University of Sussex) and Carrie-Anne Myers (City University London) discussed the film and how the issues relate to the UK. You can read more about Alison Phipps insightful review of the film here. Both speakers noted sexual harassment and bullying of women and sexual and gender minorities is rife on British campuses.
There was agreement that universities need to do more at the level of policy and to be part of a broader social effort to dismantle pernicious gendered cultures like “laddism”. We were very happy to hear from an audience member from the Sexual Respect group at the University of Kent about the important work being done there to prevent sexual violence on campus and to better support student survivors.