Did 'Hunting Ground' Mislead?

January 29, 2015
  • Industry News

"The Hunting Ground" is a new documentary that blasts colleges for their handling (or ignoring) of sexual assault issues. The film just had its premiere at Sundance and the coming months will see theatrical release and a screening on CNN. The initial reviews have been strong. Some reviews have mentioned, quoting the film, that college presidents refused to be interviewed -- a potentially damning detail given that one of the accusations made in the documentary and in general these days is that college leaders won't speak out about the sexual assault issue.

There's a problem with the statement about college presidents in the film, however. One president does in fact appear and another (whose campus has had intense debates about sexual assault) was filmed on camera for the documentary, but none of the material was used.

The reason some reviewers may have assumed that no presidents appear is that this language appears in the credits: "The presidents or chancellors of UNC, Harvard, Notre Dame, Florida State, Berkeley, Occidental and more than 35 other schools all declined to be interviewed for this film." While the statement doesn't say that it only asked 35 other leaders of colleges to appear, there is no suggestion that any agreed to do so. The six institutions named are the focus of the documentary. While producers of the film shared that language with Inside Higher Ed, they declined to provide a copy of the documentary, saying that currently it was only available at Sundance.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/29/new-documentary-suggests-incorrectly-no-college-leaders-would-sit-camera-interviews