Cliques at School

High school seniors chime in on clique culture

The jocks. The cheerleaders. The nerds. The rebels. Most people will recall being affiliated with some type of group or crowd when they were young. And these types of "cliques" are often the basis of movies about adolescence: The varsity basketball team captain dates the mean girl who rules the school. But how close do these dramatizations connect to the reality of growing up in Beijing? We sat down with four students from the Western Academy of Beijing to find out. Lisa Liang

What is the clique situation like at your school?

HARRIET
I don't think there are cliques so much as there are different groups of friends. Most people have different groups of friends but it's not really "cliques" as you would see them in American movies. Everyone likes each other and gets along.

GABRIELLA
Especially in Grade 12, because we don't have that many people. Relatively, it's quite a small grade. I think if there would be a problem with cliques, it would be people in middle school, maybe the younger grades, but not really by year 12. Hopefully, everyone's mature enough to be over the whole excluding thing.

THIAGO
I don't see any problems, at least not here. At my last school, we had little groups and that was a problem, but when I got here in tenth grade, there were a couple of groups but not a big barrier between people. I feel free to talk with anyone at this school, and I think almost everyone feels the same way.

FRANCIS
I guess cliques form just because the grade can't be just one. There has to be some separation because we can't all talk to each other at the same time. So I guess a common interest forms, but it isn't exactly like one type of people stay here, one type of people go there. It's just same interests, same likings, stuff like that.

Are there distinctive groups, like jocks or computer nerds?

FRANCIS
That's what makes WAB different from everywhere else. There is no line.

HARRIET
A lot of people play sports, a lot of people are on sports teams, and you're friends with the people on your teams or your band or whatever, but its not like those people play sports, or those people like computers. Everyone has a variety of different interests, and no one is ostracized by anyone else.

Then having cliques or a group of friends is not necessarily a bad thing?

ALL
Not at all.

HARRIET
Cliques are usually defined as not encouraging other people to join you, but that's about it. They're not always a bad thing.

GABRIELLA
Going to an international school, people often leave at the end of the year, so you might have ten best friends and they might all leave. You just have to get used to being friends with a lot of people.

THIAGO
What she said was very important. People tend to leave more often, at least compared to other schools, so I think that's why the groups aren't so closed.

How do you handle having your friends leave?

THIAGO
Well, it happens, and we're all graduating in a year so we're all going to leave. I never had problems with people leaving. I would hope that they stay, but it happens and you have to deal with it.

HARRIET
Some people grow up in communities where you're at school with the same people from kindergarten until you graduate, but I think it could be a benefit going to an international school because we grow up moving around and we get used to having to make new friends. So when we go to university, it's going to be easy for us to make friends because we're used to adapting to different environments and being able to find common interests with a variety of different people.