Cliques. They’re seen everywhere. From Mean Girls, to Gossip Girl, and more. Cliques are everywhere.

Whether or not anyone would like to acknowledge the presence of cliques of FHC, I promise you, they are here and more present than ever.

Cliques tend to follow every single stereotype you could possibly imagine. Kind people can quickly become vicious, cruel, and insensitive when they are with other members of their clique.

Are you actually so insecure about the relationships in your life you feel the need to title your group, exclude others and then continually never attempt to invite others? Congratulations. You’ve done it. You’ve officially closed yourself and your friends off from the rest of the world.

It is wonderful to have a small group of people you can trust. But issues arise quite quickly when your friends become your whole world. One can tend to forget that there are other people walking the halls around them. These classmates could be lonely, in need of help, or struggling; and you would never know because of you ignore others outside your inner circle.

People need to be accepted. People have feelings. People need to be wanted.

If you go out of your way to ensure that just your clique is involved with an event, you hurt people. Even if you don’t want to see it, you hurt people. All the time.

Your exclusiveness, and quite frankly, mean habits are not good for anyone. When people look back on high school, you could be remembered as the person who wasn’t kind, wasn’t welcoming, and wasn’t social unless they were with the rest of their clique.

Sure, no matter what, labels and groups are going to happen naturally. People get lumped in with the rest of their group, whether it be their drama cast, their team, or activity members. Hours of time in close quarters with a group aimed at a productive goal creates bonding. These are the cliques that could be seen as helpful. They are the cliques that win state championships, put on incredible performances, or tackle great issues. Usually, after the goal is reached and the show or season ends, people still remain friends with one another. The real issue is with the people who have no goal, but just choose to be social with a single group of peers because they don’t want to make the effort to get to know others. That’s not only lazy but sad.

Really, I’m rather disappointed in some of my fellow schoolmates for sticking to only what they know. There is such a problem with people only talking to and hanging out with the same handful of people.