With all of these "frat boys" roaming around and hazing pledges to death, it’s hard to escape judgment and stereotypes from the public. Even friends, families and businesses have these stereotypes of fraternities that

guys like me can't escape.

I'm writing to try and break this stereotype that people have of all fraternity men. Below, I'll run through the top three stereotypes that I've heard about fraternities and explain why each one is wildly false.

1. "All they do is drink and party"

I'll let the statistics speak for themselves. Annually, fraternities give more than 2 million hours of community service and raise over $14 million for charities. Just this past year, my chapter raised $7,103 for charities and logged over 2,000 community service hours. How could someone say that all we do is drink and party!? How many community service hours do you have

2. "They pay for their friends"

When someone says that I pay for my friends, the first thing that I say is, "then this was the best investment that I've ever made." Having true best friends for life is priceless. Also, the money isn't even buying friends.

Just within Sigma Alpha Epsilon, $300,000 in scholarships is awarded to its members each year and thousands of brothers are sent to leadership school to better themselves, which wouldn't be possible without dues.

3. "They disrespect women"

This one really grinds my gears. It kills me that the select few fraternity men that disrespect women bring down the masses. The majority of fraternities have their foundations built around treating women properly. I know mine does. Each fraternity usually has a "violet" or "sweetheart" that they treat like royalty. Sigma Alpha Epsilon's creed is even called, "The True Gentleman."

I'm not saying that every fraternity man (including my own brothers) is perfect. What I'm saying is, there will always be a few bad apples in the bunch, but don't throw out the rest. I hope that after reading this article, people will be able to distinguish the "frat boy" from the fraternity man.