The Hunting Ground is screening for free this week at the Athena, and each screening is preceded by a video from OU officials.
The first time Jenny Hall-Jones watched The Hunting Ground, a documentary about sexual assault, she cried.
“When I saw it the first time, my gut reaction ... was that I was ashamed to work in higher education and thought that we could and should be doing better than this. This is not OK,” Hall-Jones, Ohio University’s interim vice president for Student Affairs and dean of students, said.
The Hunting Ground, which is screening for free at the Athena Cinema this week, details how many colleges mismanage sexual assault cases.
OU officials are making it clear they want students to feel comfortable reporting sexual assaults.
Before every screening of the documentary, OU is showing a video detailing how students can report to OU any kind of unwanted sexual contact. The short film also describes the various ways to do so.
The roughly three-minute video features Hall-Jones, OU Police Chief Andrew Powers, OU’s Title IX Coordinator Inya Baiye and OU Survivor Advocacy Program Coordinator Delaney Anderson.
“We want you to know that personal crimes, especially sexual assault are our top concern,” Powers said in the video. “If you report a sexual assault to Ohio University Police, our first priority will be your personal safety and well being.”
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Hall-Jones said Tuesday that a group of OU officials decided to make the video after watching how the students featured in the film were treated at their colleges.
“My fear was that people are going to watch this movie … and say, ‘Wow if this ever happens to me, I’m never going to tell my dean of students, I’m never going to report it,’ ” Hall-Jones said. “We just wanted to make sure that people understood that if something like that happened here, they would be taken seriously.”
OUPD Lt. Tim Ryan said the department decided to participate because it “felt it was important to put a face on the police department that reassures survivors.”
Some students who viewed the video and the documentary said the difference between OU and other colleges is clear.
“You could tell OU’s so much more supportive compared to … other schools,” Jessi Lauer-Crosby, a sophomore studying business economics and pre-law, said.
The film talks about the ways some institutions make reporting a sexual assault difficult, but Charlee Cobb, a sophomore studying journalism who previously worked for The Post, said she doesn’t think OU is one of those places.
“Nothing’s perfect, but we’re definitely headed in the right direction,” Cobb said.
Working in higher education, Hall-Jones said she knows sometimes there are power structures that prevent people from doing their jobs.
“I’m lucky that I work at a place where I don’t feel that way ... (and) that I feel supported and that I can do my job in the best way I can and … institutional structures are not getting in my way,” Hall-Jones said.
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*Provided via The Division of Student Affairs
