"Can that b---- just shut up already?"
As the Tallahassee premiere of the documentary "The Hunting Ground" drew nearer, I'd heard several variations of this statement uttered by Tallahassee natives and Florida State students. Erica Kinsman, the woman who says Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston raped her in December 2012, spoke publicly for the first time in the film, which offers a jarring portrayal of the sexual assault epidemic on college campuses.
Though widely praised for its harrowing look into sexual assault on college campuses, the film was not well received in the Tallahassee and Florida State community -- especially when it opened this weekend.
Opening weekend began Thursday in Tallahassee, when the film's director, Kirby Dick, and investigative producer, Amy Herdy, held a panel at the AMC in the Tallahassee Mall to open up a dialogue about the film and the college sexual assault epidemic across the country.
In response, Florida State president John Thrasher issued a statement explaining why FSU administrators declined to attend, and took issue with the film's characterization of FSU's decision to not participate. "The first time the University was contacted by the filmmakers was December 18 -- nearly three months after they had submitted the film to the Sundance Film Festival and it was scheduled for its artistic premiere. They sent a generic email asking for comment about sexual assault but failed to disclose that FSU would be a target of criticism and withheld the fact that Ms. Kinsman would be going public with her version of the story."
Dick issued a statement later saying that the film was kept open until Feb. 19 waiting for a response from FSU, and none came until the week of the opening. "Rather than attack the messenger," Dick said, "President Thrasher should show leadership and focus on the problem that has existed on his campus for decades."
On opening night, there were about 100 individuals in attendance, mostly in support of the film. By Saturday, after multiple showings in the area ... crickets. Only seven people showed up for the 12:15 p.m. showing at one local theater. A few Internet commenters posted messages like "Boycott" and "don't pay to see Erica Kinsman lie," but mostly, the film's premiere went largely under the radar.
I did pay to hear Kinsman's side of the story ($7.51, to be exact). Speaking as an FSU student, there is a certain expectation before one is rendered a worthy member of the Florida State community that you must harbor a deep and intense pride for the school. University culture is like nothing I had ever experienced before I entered the walls of Florida State. There are profound, deep-rooted emotions individuals feel toward their alma mater. To bleed garnet and gold is to stand with Florida State, through thick and thin and every loss and win.
It's a bloodline that runs deep and through several generations. When Kinsman dared to accuse Winston of rape, she went directly against that garnet and gold bloodline. It was no longer the word of the accuser vs. the word of the accused, or one student vs. another. It became one accuser vs. the university, the FSU student body, FSU football fans, the vicious messages on #FSUTwitter, several generations of alumni and a multibillion-dollar college football industry.
With intense pride for one's school comes dissonance when the same school is accused of doing something egregiously wrong. The Tallahassee Police Department did almost nothing for 10 months. Florida State didn't hold a code of conduct hearing for Winston until two years after the initial report, after being delayed twice until December 2014.
But given the evidence produced from the case, nobody can argue with pure certainty whether a rape occurred on Dec. 7, 2012. Football player Chris Casher admitted to videotaping the encounter, but he later deleted the video. It comes down to Kinsman's word against Winston's. But whether or not Winston raped Kinsman that night, many FSU fans had already made up their minds the second they learned that it was Winston who had been accused.
The night before "College GameDay" came to Florida State earlier this season, I had to drive to the newspaper's office around midnight to drop off "GameDay" posters we made for the event. My neighbors from across the street were having a party, and I could see from a few feet away that they were leaning on my car. I asked them to please move as I needed to get to the door, and my request resulted in one of the guys pulling down his pants, revealing his genitals -- his drunken way of saying "screw you."
I couldn't fathom why he thought this was an appropriate response to me respectfully asking him to move away from my car, and I was sure that the dozens of people who witnessed would not tolerate this behavior.
I was wrong.
He was met with a roar of laughter and approval from the rest of his friends. I kept silent and quickly drove away, fearing the group could potentially become violent toward me.
During my freshman year, a girl was completely naked and passed out in the hallway of my friend's dorm. She had wandered outside her friend's bedroom after her friend put her to bed for being too intoxicated. Campus police were chuckling as they asked her name and where she lived -- to them, she was just another drunk girl. As they passed judgment, another girl brought a blanket out and covered the girl's body.
In November of 2013, the news had just broken about Winston being accused of rape when Kinsman's sorority received bomb threats, and Delta Zeta sorority members were advised to not show their letters in public to avoid any potential harassment directed against them.
Even the terminology used to describe heterosexual sex frequently inherently implies violence against women -- to nail, smash, rail -- any and all of these terms signify a message of violence against women's bodies.
Instead of rejecting this violence embedded in our language, in our culture, college men are lauded and praised for their conquests. Not speaking out against micro-aggressions contributes to the problem of sexual violence against women, whether it's bomb threats against an entire sorority, slut-shaming those who say they were raped or violent language.
In the film, rape survivors at various universities say the threats and messages of hate they received from their own community were more traumatic than the rape itself. For many women, the aftermath and blame for speaking out becomes impossible to deal with, and this pervasive, misguided hostility prevents women who have been victims of rape from ever coming forward.
At Florida State, you are conditioned from the start to subscribe to the Seminole religion. For some FSU fans, if they did not believe Winston was innocent, then they could not simultaneously support his success on the football field, which is why they will blindly fight until the end in support of their star player.
This is not indicative of the entire Seminole community, however, which is fundamentally positive -- it is mostly an enormous network of people creating positive change. However, no matter what you believe happened on Dec. 7, 2012, "The Hunting Ground" showed that it's time to admit that campuses around the nation have a problem, including Florida State's. If we don't work to mend the collective hostility toward women and survivors of rape, more women will be afraid to speak out, and more rape charges will be rendered futile, despite the fact that studies show only 2 to 8 percent of rape claims are false.
As long as violent attitudes toward women are embedded into our framework, the Seminole community will stand on shaky ground.
Setareh Baig is a senior at Florida State, and the editor-in-chief of the school's student newspaper, FSView & Florida Flambeau. You can follow Setareh on Twitter @heysetareh_ or at her paper's site, fsunews.com.