Both were raped during their time on campus, both went through the proper hierarchical channels assuming that the situation would be handled in an expedient manner, and both tragically had to learn what so many women around America and the world have: nobody seemed to particularly care, and their rapists were essentially slapped on the hand so that the school might save face.
One major contributing facet to that change is owed to the Herculean efforts of Annie Clark and Andrea Pino, two former students at the University of North Carolina. It’s just one that American society is finally starting to talk about.
But despite the immediacy of these numbers, Dick is careful to point out that this isn’t a new problem. It’s not even so much an issue, really, as it’s an epidemic as the film states, one in five women (on average) are raped during a given school year, according to statistics gathered as recently as last year. Specifically, the safety and protection and equality promised on college campuses by schools as it relates to the issue of sexual assault and rape. The problem that Kirby Dick ( This Film Is Not Yet Rated, The Invisible War) addresses in The Hunting Ground is that this has become, in some respects, an outright lie.