Fraternity Reputations

[Dylo]

I'd like to start by saying I have been lurking here for several months now, and all the stories and advice on here really help me with preparing for rush and familiarizing me with what Greek life is all about.

About/Backstory: I am a freshman at my University, and before orientation was not that interested in rushing. None of my family has been greek, my friends were never interested, and it just didn't seem like something I would be into. However after talking to the different greek organizations I became really interested and looked into it more.
I moved into my dorm a two and a half weeks ago, and have been in classes for two weeks now. In these weeks I have attended all of the pre-rush events, went to different fraternity and sorority parties and have really gotten to know a lot of guys before rush. I constantly talk to upperclassman of what they think about the different fraternities and am trying to familiarize myself with everything. Now I have my heart set on rushing and eventually pledging to a fraternity.

Now at my school a lot of the fraternities that I am interested in have developed bad reputations in different ways. For example, one of them has had a history of date rape, and have been known to use roofies. Another is known to be the 'gay' fraternity, are said to be 'try hards', and get a really bad rap for it. Even when I was in the car with one of the DDs on the way to a party, we'd pass students who would yell out derogatory statements and slurs toward his fraternity.

While I realize every fraternity will have it's haters, my main question is how much do I isolate myself socially by joining specific fraternities with a bad reputations? While I don't care if someone calls me a queer and such, I don't want to be known as someone who date rapes and roofies. Also, friends that I have met are rushing different fraternities than I like. How much will one fraternity socialize with another?

I guess my main fear is that by joining a fraternity is that I will be cut off from different social groups and people. Does this happen?




Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this and respond. I'd also like to apologize if this was unclear in any way, I'd be happy to clarify anything you did not understand or answer any question that would be of use.