“They tell you as an undergrad that sorority is not four years. It's for life. You know what? It really is,” says Mary Beth Tully '84 '21P '21P, a Board of Trustees member and Alpha Phi sister.
Stepping onto campus in the fall of 1980, Tully recalls that co-education brought a new set of challenges that Greek life was well suited to serve. “At the time, the male-female ratio was about 70-30. I think for many of the women in my class, we were really looking for an opportunity to find a female-focused community in a very male environment. Sororities at the time, outside of athletics, were one of the few opportunities for women to really band together. I welcomed the opportunity to have a group of women who frankly had my back in every aspect of Lehigh.”
Lehigh will celebrate 50 years of sorority life at Reunion 2025. Though times have changed and enrollment has brought a better balance to the ratio, Maddy Saks ’27 can testify that the core values of sororities remain a positive factor in the student experience for women on campus.
A part of Pi Beta Phi member class (MC) ’24, Saks grew up hearing her family’s positive testimonials. “My mom and dad met here [in 1993] and then my siblings graduated in 2023, and all of them were a part of Greek life, and they had really great experiences with it. So I knew that I wanted to join, but I knew that I didn't want their experiences to shape mine. I wanted to come and choose my own place so that I could be my own person.”
Both Tully and Saks leapt at the chance to meet and share their sorority experiences. In the end, they discovered that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
A Welcome Rush
Saks remembers a “welcoming energy” during rush. “Everybody wants to be friends with everybody. Even though I came in with my best friend, that didn't stop me from wanting to make more friends and wanting to get to know everyone in my MC [member class] and wanting to get to know people in the class above me. I just knew I would love it, and I'm sure I would have loved most other sororities too because I think all of the women here at Lehigh are really amazing and are all super welcoming.”
There were far fewer options when Tully entered: three sororities versus 33 fraternities. But she felt the same supportive draw.
“Much like Maddy, I had the opportunity to meet women in a very welcoming environment,” Tully shares. “I came back in the spring semester with a very open mind and thought, ‘Let's go with what really kind of feels right.’ I was actually the only student in my freshman hall that went through sorority recruitment.” Moving to SMAGs (Saucon, married, and graduate students) and producing elaborate skits during rush hold a permanent place in her memory.
“I remember one of our rounds was a play on the Wizard of Oz, and it was like a journey to the Emerald City. It was a journey to Alpha Phi,” she recalls. “I think I still remember some of the words.”
With 11 sororities in 2025 and accompanied by friends and roommates also participating, Saks recalls an “exhilarating” rush experience.
“You leave every house and you feel super energized, but also really tired at the same time because you've been with so many different people all day,” says Saks. “There were so many new people and so many new faces. And I'm so happy that I've met all of them, and I can't imagine that I didn't know them before.”
The Unexpected
Tully and Saks both note that they chose to “trust the process” during rush. Saks says that doing so revealed some life-changing truths about the capacity for true connection through female friendships.
“I think what surprised me most was how welcoming and open everyone was to making so many new friends. [...] Some people did come into Pi Phi with a friend group, and they still made so many friends and were so open to meeting new people,” Saks reflected. “That was a great feeling for me because I hadn’t seen that in the past, especially in high school.”
She continues, “Those first couple of weeks were the most exciting times where you finally feel like you have this place that you belong and you felt this like stability.”
For Tully, she was more surprised by a revelation that came while attending an Alpha Phi convention during her sophomore year. “I think when I joined Alpha Phi, I didn't realize that Alpha Phi was a much bigger entity and that there were hundreds of chapters across North America. [...] Understanding that, ‘Oh! This is not just a Lehigh thing?’ This is a much bigger organization with a much bigger community that I hadn't really considered before. As an undergraduate, I had no idea this was an organization of 200,000-plus alumni across the world.”
The Sisterhood
Saks’ house has created bonds while eating the treats she makes. “I bake like two to three times a week for everybody in the house, and everyone will see that I've started baking. So they'll start getting excited, and I'll send a message in the group chat for the house. I can hear people yelling, ‘Go, go, go! Run downstairs!’ and everyone is in the kitchen within 30 seconds, and we're all eating together.”
Tully says sitting around the kitchen table was a key memory of togetherness for her house as well.
“It was apartment-style living within this larger house and eating dinner together every night at a set time. If you can believe that, we would all stand up and sit down together and wash the dishes. It was a group of women you could rely on all the time.”
These family-style moments built a strong foundation for Lehigh’s first women on campus. “Alpha Phi on the Lehigh campus was really like a support system,” Tully recalls. “We lived so far away relative to campus that we would have lunch together in the snack bar in the University Center. [...] You had to rely on each other to safely get back and forth.”
Tully adds, “You never left anyone behind … you never did.”
The Stereotype
One thing that still exists is the battle against the misconceptions about sororities.
Saks lists the most common ones: “All they do is party and they don't do their homework and they're all super competitive with each other and that people are not nice to each other about the way they look and stuff like that. Honestly, none of that's true. I haven't seen any of that in any sorority here.”
Admitting she can only speak to her own experience, she calls out the harm in those stereotypes. “It's not a toxic environment at all,” she asserts. “I think that can hinder someone’s experience if they think that that's what it's going to be like and then it's nothing like that. It's sad that some people try to pit women against each other.”
In agreement, Tully highlights the skills and experience Greek life offers. “Fundamentally, we offer women's leadership in so many facets. If you're a finance officer at a fraternity or sorority, you're managing hundreds of thousands of dollars of a budget. Those are real transferable skills you can leverage. Anyone who spends 10 minutes looking at accreditation reports for sororities at Lehigh will see that these are incredibly accomplished organizations that are held to a very high standard.”
Noting philanthropy, programming, academic services, mentorship, and community engagement, Tully says people could do a better job of touting the accomplishments of the sorority women on campus.
“They're leaders in student organizations, they're leaders in clubs, they're in athletics [...] There's so much that dispels the notion that sorority women are some kind of ridiculous stereotype, and the fact is that they represent every corner of the university. They have an opportunity to make an impact, [and] they do very tangibly. And I think that's just not understood.”
The Next Gen
For the past 15 years, Tully has served as adviser of the Alpha Phi Theta Mu chapter at Hofstra University. Her work focuses on developing relationships with the university administration that allow sororities to remain relevant. She helps ensure they evolve to support programming that includes the diverse range of students and their various needs: mental health support, health and wellness initiatives, and fostering a community of belonging that she believes lies at the root of sorority life.
Adds Tully, “We really try to be relevant to the collegiate experience today, understanding it's evolving and changing, and we need to meet the women where they are.”
Saks serves as the director of community inclusion for Pi Phi. Her mission is to promote friendship and inclusion among the house. Though, she admits, it’s never been an issue.
“That's part of our core values — lifelong friendship — and I can totally see how I'm going to be friends with these people for the rest of my life. My best friend [and I] talk about wanting to live near each other when we're older and raise our kids together. Everyone that I've met here, I want to be at their weddings. I want to know these people for the rest of my life.”
“That’s so true, Maddy,” chimes in Tully. “They will be your bridesmaids. Two of mine were!”
