<p>kansasmom,</p>
<p>Your S does not seem to be a “nerd” to me. He seems pretty cool!</p>
<p>IMHO, it’s better to be “socially inept” than join a frat just to be social…</p>
<p>He’s probably too intellectual for it anyway.</p>
<p>
As with everything in life, all frats are not created equal. I quickly realized this when examining frats from a gay perspective. I have a friend at one southern school who admits the frats are fairly homophobic there, and I know of another southern school where a gay guy is president of KA (a traditionally conservative, southern frat) and it’s perfectly acceptable for brothers to take other guys to formals. ADPhi guys at Chicago turned up to protest Westboro Baptist Church, and there’s even one frat available at a few universities (e.g. Penn) that’s geared specifically for LGBT students.</p>
<p>At my university, there were very specific reputations for each frat. Some of the frats had somewhat hardcore partiers compared to the rest of the more relaxed student body (although pretty pathetic compared to an average state school), while one of the others was at least 50% filled with marching band members. That’s the whole point of rush, after all – so you and the frats can get a feel of whether you’re really a good match for each other.</p>
<p>So…stereotypes aside, frats tend to be rather diverse. Whether one should rule them out depends on the school in question, one’s personal preferences, and how available other entertainment venues are outside the Greek system (this is mostly a problem with rural schools).</p>