Editor’s Note: March 1 has been named Sexual Assault Awareness Day. Today’s story, the first of three segments, examines myths and attitudes about rape.

Despite attempts to increase awareness of sexual assault, many students continue to believe stereotypical myths and think rape is a woman’s fault.

Although many people assume rapists are strangers, the most common form of sexual assault is acquaintance rape, said Judy Skorek, University Resources for Women assistant director.

“You don’t have an issue of people jumping out of the bushes to get you,” Skorek said. “What you have here is students raping students.”

Stranger rape is rare at NIU, Skorek said. A “typical” sexual assault involves two people who know each other and has “some form of substance involved—usually alcohol,” she said.

Rape is not just a women’s issue, Skorek said. “Men are attacked, too. Their assailants aren’t necessarily women, but other men,” she said.

One male NIU student reported being raped last semester, said Jenine Pavlik, assistant NIU judicial director.

Rape is a result of “archaic attitudes” that people get from their families and peers, Skorek said.

Rapists also might be influenced by television and movies, said NIU psychology Professor Stephen Gold. Movies often give false impressions that a woman who said “no” in the beginning is satisfied in the end, he said.

“It makes men feel justified—‘It’s what she wanted,'” Gold said. “There’s a macho-man attitude.”

Rape interferes with a woman’s ability to trust men, her future sexual involvement and provides flashbacks of pain, anxiety and self-doubt, he said.

According to a survey of 400 undergraduates conducted by Auburn University in Alabama and the University of Miami, 59 percent of men surveyed and 38 percent of women surveyed said women provoke rape by their appearance or behavior.

More than one-third of the men surveyed said it would do some women some good to get raped, 8 percent of women surveyed agreed.

Seventeen percent of the men surveyed said if a woman is going to be raped, she might as well relax and enjoy it. Seven percent of the women surveyed agreed.

Another 17 percent of the men surveyed said in most cases, when a woman was raped, she was asking for it. Four percent of the women surveyed agreed.

Other common myths surrounding rape are that women secretly want to be raped, rapes do not happen on campuses, rape is a crime of sexual passion and “it won’t happen to me.”

Rape victims also desire to forget the rape and fear rejection, said Chris Porterfield, assistant director of orientation and student assistance.

“Men don’t know what rape is to a woman,” Porterfield said. “As long as people still think the prime value of a woman is sex,” there will be men who rape, he said.

Some administrators at the University of Illinois at Champaign recommended banning their pompon squad earlier this month because they supposedly portray women as sexual objects.

Skorek said they were “blaming the women again. The women are not causing the problem,” she said.

The U of I report found that 16.4 percent of women on campus said they had been raped or were the victim of an attempted rape.

Rape is prevalent on campuses because there is “an excessive amount of population in a small place that range in age from 18 to 22,” Skorek said.

Many rape victims have a “victim stigma,” said Blanche McHugh, student housing training and student development coordinator. They often feel like they will be blamed for doing something wrong, she said.

Other common feelings are embarrassment, shame and the fear that others will change their relationships with the victim, she said.