In the middle of the coldest stretch of the year, a lot of student are taking a few nights out of their schedules to participate in spring rush at the sororities and fraternities on campus.

“Rush” is just another word for recruitment for new members, and — at least at Delta Upsilon where I am a member — the rush events are nothing like the scenes from “Animal House” people tend to have in their minds when they hear something about a “frat.”

In fact, at DU, it’s an unspoken rule that none of us even use the word “frat,” to avoid the unpleasant associations with some of Greek life’s darker stereotypes.

As a transfer student to UND last fall, I had absolutely no intentions of looking at the fraternities. Looking back, I see that I never gave it a fair chance; I just took what I thought I knew about “frat life” and blocked the rest out.

The school I transferred from had probably the largest, craziest, Greek life scenes on the West Coast. It only took a little conversation with my floormates in my dorm to decide that I’d rather find friends in ways that didn’t involve meaningless, dangerous, and just plain messed up initiation rites that I’d been hearing about.

Over the summer before this school year, then, I was apprehensive about going to a few fraternity events I’d been invited to, but I’m glad I did — and not just because I ended up meeting tons of people, making new friends, and finding a welcoming place to live this year.

Instead, the reason I’m so proud of myself for saying yes to learning more about the fraternities is for the simpler reason that I decided to stop being willfully ignorant about something.

I’m able to relate my initial disdain for the Greek scene to the automatic dislike of sushi I had last year. Uncooked fish, squid and crab wrapped in seaweed? Gross, no thank you.

Then one day, I actually tried sushi, and it was awesome.

Since that day, I’ve been embarrassed at how vehemently I would avoid sushi, even though I hadn’t given it a chance. I chose to be ignorant about something and pass active judgment of it without doing any research.

So it was with my first experience with a fraternity. Despite everything, it’s something I can say I’ve tried, and I don’t have to feel bad about passing judgement on it anymore.

It’s just a bonus that I happened to love it and experience tons of new things I never would have allowed myself the opportunity to do without it.

So if you’re one who “knows” you’d never go to a fraternity or sorority house even though you may never have seen the inside of a chapter, attended a meeting, asked about a house’s values or spoken with someone who’s involved, give it shot.

Even if you decide you still don’t like it, you’ll be able to say “frats” are a waste of time without being willfully ignorant.

I think I’d even trade my fraternity membership away to convince just 10 of you that being willfully ignorant is not something you want to be for the rest of your life. And if you don’t start changing that about yourself now while you’re young and in college, when do you think you will?

Will Beaton is the editor-in-chief for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].