I believe that hazing works to tighten a class, but not necessarily to find those that will make the best brothers or sisters. When I decided to go greek, I first pledged a local. Which hazed. (not anything physically dangerous) The things I was asked to do weren't TOO horrible, but it was definitely hazing and if my NPC org. did this we'd get our chater pulled FAST. But the only thing it did was cause the us..(the pledges) to complain about how horrible this was and how it was supposed to be fun. We would sit around at our study sessions making fun of our pledge mom and comiserating about the crap we were supposed to memorize. This is simple social psychology, people who go through a traumatic event together tend to bond.
However, the new member period should be, yes to bond within your class, but also to bond with the sisterhood /brotherhood and learn what being a brother/sister is all about. In my previous experience hazing didn't work to accomplish this. We were kept VERY seperate and were reminded all the time that we were NOT part of the group. I heard more than one sister say "pledging is hard to weed out the weak, or to see who will make a good sister" Well none of the stuff we had to do had ANYTHING to do with what you would have to do as a sister. I don't think making sure that you can memorize EVERY SINGLE person who has EVER been initiated into BOTH chapters of the sorority has ANYTHING to do with how you will handle the responsibility of taking on an office, or how carrying around a clock because you were late to a meeting will show how you will be there for a sister if she needs a ride at 3 in the morningor whatever the case maybe.
I think new member programs can be built around the fact since hazing does tend to bond people by giving them common (bad) experiences, maybe new member programs should think about bonding through fun events. I know our red rose or "I" week has a lot of bonding that takes place, but none of it is because of hazing, we bond because we are having fun together. I don't know if any of that made any sense or if I was just rambling... but hopefully you all can kinda make sense of what I wanted to say.
