When I was a student, I wasn’t part of a frat (except if you count the academic honors societies like Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Gamma Tau) … the academic fraternities that aren’t social fraternities.
But I digress. I also refereed ice hockey a lot (and some of C-league was referred to as “Goon League” because some frats played ice hockey like … tackle football).
THE GOOD
A good chunk (50-ish%) of the male population will join a fraternity, and the dynamics really vary. I noticed a good chunk of International Science Olympiad medalists (namely International Mathematical Olympiad gold medalists) joined Alpha Delta Phi:
http://adphi.mit.edu/brothers.html
Note Johnny (Jiyang) Gao of China, the IMO absolute winner and multi-gold medalist, Jeet Mohapatra, Pawan Goyal, Chris Hillenbrand, Diogo Netto, Debaditya Pramanik, Anuj Apte, Daishi Kiyohara, etc. etc. etc.
So not only racially integrated but also internationally integrated.
I have (generally) positive thoughts about MIT fraternities, like one of my friends lived in a frat where they used a computer and beam splitter to broadcast the television signal across a 5x5 panel of flat screen televisions to be like huge screen.
Many of the fraternities do provide a much more [enforced] sociable experience with socials with sororities, and it is a built-in support system and easy/natural place to make study groups.
There are a couple of co-ed former and current fraternities now living groups like pika (used to be Pi Kappa Alpha, now Independent Living Group) and Number Six Club (a.k.a. Delta Psi, Tau Chapter) and Epsilon Theta (Independent Living Group).
Every living group, dorm, frat has its own culture … part of the discovery is to figure out whether the culture is for you.
And yes, some fraternities are much more open towards having/accepting of gay men (TEP or as they self-stylize tEp, Tau Epsilon Phi, Xi Fellowship).
THE BAD / THE UGLY
In the past, and MIT has sought hard to crack down on these things, but:
Hazing - yes
Underage drinking - yes (although multiple incidents and you lose your chapter)
Drinking as part of the culture - yes for some
Slightly more Sexual assault - yes
Some of the fraternities did try to recruit more of the varsity athletes for specific sports but each fraternity is kind of its own animal.
And as mentioned, some fraternities played some sports like tackle football. (If an opposing player touched the puck, the players on the frat team might deliberately try to check that person instead of going for the puck.)
Dorms sometimes had their own problems (not going to be too controversial to mention the now defunct Bexley and Senior House).
Even individual halls within dorms have their own subculture. So I wouldn’t fret it. I knew of some people who were involved with fraternities (notably Richard Feynman was a fraternity member – go figure) and some who weren’t.