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I'm in the middle of writing a history paper for finals (about sororities, of course) so I'll expand more tomorrow, but I definitely agree that smaller chapters play a part. It's much easier to haze a pledge class of 20 than a pledge class of 150.
-hypercompetitiveness at elite schools, as in "if it's hard to get in to this school, it should be just as hard to get in to this fraternity/sorority".
-a tradition of groups coming from locals/reverting to locals/operating off campus with no official recognition. All of these seem to be more common up north, especially in the SUNY system where all organizations were local for the better part of 30 years. Or schools along the line of Harvard/Brandeis/Princeton where the administration would prefer to stick their heads in the sand rather than have oversight of the organizations.
-administrators with less knowledge of Greek life in general. I'm thinking of one specific school that shall stay unnamed that doesn't recognize Greek life even though a good portion of their campus is Greek, and they have one employee with Greek experience that they've designated as the go-between for administration and the groups because he's the only one who has any first-hand Greek knowledge.
-less emphasis on being Southern women (with all that entails-feminine, religious, proper)-the kind of direct, aggressive hazing just doesn't seem in line with the culture of the women at those campuses.
-at some schools, a lack of other things to do. If your state school is in the middle of nowhere and you need rides to and from off-campus parties and there's no public transportation, you're going to make the pledges drive you. I'll never forget my friend from high school who was in a sorority at one of those schools telling me not to bring my car to campus my sophomore year because the sororities were going to make me drive as a pledge, and my utter confusion until I explained to her that our sororities didn't do that at Clemson. Did the fraternities make their pledges drive for a while? Yes, they did, but now only initiated members drive and that actually seems to have worked well.
Obviously, not all of these apply to all schools everywhere, but they're some generalizations I've seen borne out in being from the north and moving to the south for my undergraduate experience.
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