Clique culture is something that all kids have experienced at school to varying degrees. Cliques are groups of people formed in school based off of their similarities with each other. There are many separate cliques in schools, some examples would be, a group of sports players, artists, or musicians. People in cliques are usually good friends with each other and hang out with that group of people for the majority of the school day. The downside of students being in cliques is when they exclude other people from their groups and dont talk to others in their school. This can make it hard for new people to find their footing at SPA and also make life harder for people excluded from certain social groups.

Cliques have an overall negative effect on the community. They exclude others and make it very hard for new people at school to find where they fit in. We all have our own groups of people that we hang out with at school and talk to. Whether we like to admit it or not, all of us have excluded others intentionally or unintentionally. Students have noticed that sometimes people are excluded unintentionally because a group is already very tight knit, but other times students are excluded intentionally. School cliques have affected all of us in some way. All of us at one time were the new kids looking for a group of people to hang out with. We have all felt excluded or lonely, and some people still experience this on a daily basis because of school cliques, and how they prevent different groups of people talking with each other.

Students have suggested trying to combine the groups more, in order to include everyone and eliminate cliques.The groups in school have always been divided. When people find their groups of friends they don’t want to combine with others out of fear of feeling lonely or excluded again. People need to be more willing to be in uncomfortable situations and add more new people to their groups.

Exclusion of others is never good — whether it is intentional or not.