TikToker Bama Morgan Speaks Out About Online Hate After Bama Rush (Exclusive)

If Morgan Cadenhead’s mother, Lori, could do it all over again, she wouldn’t send her daughter to the University of Alabama.

Morgan, who will graduate from the school in December, is known for her sorority rush content online, after posting videos of herself going through the process during her first year at the school in 2023.

“Bama Morgan,” as she came to be called in online circles, made waves for her videos, which differed in tone from typical rush-related content where girls often capture themselves looking their most elegant and poised. For Morgan, making a video at the end of the day, debriefing all aspects of the long, grueling days of recruitment, was never going to be a polished piece of content.

“It’s a different culture at Alabama,” Lori Cadenhead tells PEOPLE on a video call with her daughter. “They like to keep that number one sorority rushing college name tag. It’s a different beast there. Maybe she would’ve gone to Ole Miss or one of the other schools. She probably wouldn’t have blown up on [social] media either. And she would’ve gone into a sorority and would’ve had the time of her life.”

During sorority rush, Morgan leaned into a more rough-around-the-edges persona, hoping to be honest about the toll that the process was taking on her — a tactic that wasn’t a tactic at all.

“The first year that I rushed those videos were definitely me,” she tells PEOPLE. “I remember when I got my manager right around that time when we had our first call. They were very shocked that my online persona was almost the exact same as how I was in real life. And they said that was very interesting, because a lot of people aren’t like that. They curate a personality online [and are a] different in person [offline].”

Morgan went through the recruitment process, only to be dropped just before Bid Day, prompting an outpouring of support and outrage from those who had been following along with her journey closely online.

Many were quick to point out that it may have been the unpolished nature of Morgan’s socials that deterred sororities from extending her a bid.

Determined to try again, she returned to formal recruitment once more the next year — this time attempting to change elements of her image to hopefully be more “sorority-like.”

“I wanted to rush the second time because I feel like with the way social media was the first time and how unprepared I was, I didn’t give it like a real shot,” Morgan tells PEOPLE of her decision to go through recruitment again, despite not receiving a bid the first time.

“I’m not gonna say I didn’t take it seriously or that I didn’t want it the first year. I felt like going into the second time, if I put 100% of my effort into it, if I truly dedicated myself to the process, I would probably get in.”

Morgan’s second attempt at recruitment is documented both on her personal TikTok and Lifetime’s new TV show A Sorority Mom’s Guide to Rush, which follows mom-daughter duos as they navigate the high-pressure world of Greek life.

After going through rush a second time in 2024, Morgan made it through the process just up until Bid Day, even receiving an invite back to a “top” house at the school, only to receive a call just before the day began, letting her know that she had been released from the process once again.

“A lot of people are in sororities here, so it is hard to find people who aren’t necessarily a part of a form of Greek life,” Morgan says of the Alabama social scene. “A lot of students that don’t do primary recruitment will join a major-specific fraternity or sorority. It’s really hard to find people who aren’t necessarily in one.”

For Morgan, whose social media presence took off after she went through recruitment, not being in a sorority now isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“When you’re in a sorority or a fraternity, you represent the entire house and institution as a whole,” she explains. “So you’re held to a very specific standard. You’re not allowed to necessarily do things that reflect badly on the entity as a whole. So, for me personally, I feel like it’s been very good for me. I don’t have limitations. I can kind of do whatever I want.”

She acknowledges that navigating a balance of being able to post online and being in a sorority can bring its own share of troubles.

“I do sympathize with a lot of the girls who are active,” she says. “I’ve spoken to many of them. Like, we talk to each other. We’re not like besties, but we talk. A lot of them are really stressed with having to represent an entire house filled with people.”

While not being in a sorority might bode well for Morgan’s ability to post online now, her overall college experience at Alabama has had its ups and downs.

“I had almost no issues the first year that I was here. I did struggle a little bit mentally, but that was just largely being away from home and missing my family,” she says. “But I really encountered a lot of issues last year and this year, now that the show’s coming out. A lot of people don’t really care for me if I had to put it into words. A lot of my classmates don’t particularly like me, so that is a little bit of a struggle, but it gets better.”

She recalls her first year at the University of Alabama, watching them decorate their dorms in outlandish decor and prepare for recruitment, feeling left out amongst the crowd.

“I just knew that that couldn’t be how everybody felt or how everybody went through rushed because it was an incredibly difficult process,” she says.

She references a video she made that went viral during her first rush, where she chugs a bottle of orange juice, saying, “That is how I felt and that was how the process looked for me. And I’m sure it’s how it looked for a lot of other girls. And again, the first year that I rushed, that was the year that rush debriefs were very popular. And they all looked so put together by the end of the day. And that kind of spurred on the orange juice video. ’cause I was like, guys, this isn’t real.”

For Morgan, representing the grueling rush process accurately was paramount, and her mom initially wasn’t worried about Morgan as she went through the process.

“I knew she was having fun, you know, and I wasn’t worried,” Lori says of watching from afar as her daughter navigated the Greek life recruitment scene. “I always thought she would get into a sorority. Did I expect her to get into a top sorority? No, but I knew, I was pretty sure she was gonna get into a sorority.”

After Morgan didn’t receive a bid on the last day before recruitment (she says that Panhellenic was late in calling her to let her know before the preference round that she hadn’t received a bid), she says that not much changed about the way she was treated on campus.

“I had a job at UA’s supply store and people would come in all the time to say hi to me,” she says. “I never had any kind of issues with my classmates or kids saying things to me. There were probably people out there that just didn’t like me just because of social media and how I did TikTok the first year, but I never had any issues. My first year at UA was by far my best. Then we went home for the summer, and I started getting ready to rush for a second time.”

This is where Lori began to have doubts.

“I didn’t think it was a good idea,” she says. “I knew deep down inside how it was gonna go.”

Morgan changed a lot about her appearance and behavior, hoping it would fall in line with what the girls in sororities were looking for.

“I think it says a lot about the process that I had to change as much as I did the second time,” she says. “Because obviously the idealness aspect of it is that you’ll get it no matter what you look or act like. Like they’ll truly accept you. Which I don’t agree with. I don’t feel like that’s 100% how it is at all.”

Lori found it difficult to watch her daughter grapple with the idea of making changes to her appearance and demeanor to fit in with the Greek life scene.

“She keeps on saying, ‘It’s the way I acted. That’s why I didn’t get in.’ But I don’t think she did anything wrong the first time,” Lori says. “I mean, okay, maybe she shouldn’t have chugged the orange juice, but short of that, I mean, she, she wasn’t doing anything scandalous.”

Opening up about her second time rushing, Morgan says she felt the girls’ behavior toward her had changed. Many were mistrustful, due to, she says, her large social media presence. Even after rush, she felt that her classmates acted differently, saying that she received hate online and in person in her classes.

When she decided to join the cast of A Sorority Mom’s Guide to Rush, she and Lori were both worried about the response that they might receive.

“If the show didn’t have any kind of appeal and filming the show didn’t have any kind of appeal, it would’ve just been one episode and I would’ve been the only person in it,” she defends the move. “But obviously, there’s 20 girls in the show and there’s 10 episodes. So I just feel like if there was no appeal at all, then other girls wouldn’t have filmed as well.”

The pair also feels that their mother-daughter relationship has changed as a result of the show.

“I think she started realizing how people are, and she needs to appreciate what she has, but I don’t even know if that’s it,” Lori says.

Despite the whirlwind that came along with both rushes, Morgan wouldn’t change her actions or decisions.

“I feel like [both rushes] kind of made me who I am today,” she says proudly. “I’m very happy with the person I am today. I don’t think I would change anything.”

Even though the negatives of Morgan’s experience were captured for the world to see online, she still maintains that girls should try out recruitment — that her experience is not a monolith.

As she looks forward to graduating in December, Morgan is working on writing a book.

“The book’s not about rush,” her mom jokes.

She hopes to continue with social media, too, despite the backlash she has experienced online.

“There are people out there that hate me, that’ll never meet me in their entire life,” she says. “This has definitely taught me that people feel very emboldened by social media. And I always try to be nice to everybody. I don’t want anybody to ever walk away from an interaction with me and feel like ‘I don’t think she liked me.’ Because I understand what it’s like to be on the other side of that and be like, ‘Oh my God, everybody here hates me.’ So, I always want everybody to have a good time. It’s kind of my philosophy.”