systems should eliminate popular cliques. No one, except those who endure it insufferably, believes that peer abuse is real or damaging. To most, including those guilty of torment, the brutal and savage emotional torture and terror that the elite rain upon the nonconformists merely appears to be part of a harmless game where no one gets hurt. These same people do not see the deep emotional markings they have left behind in psychologically fragile adolescents. Years down the road, the wounds may have closed but the scars remain as a painful memory that high school does not always give you the best years of your life. Let it be known that brutish savagery is irreversible. Ignorant school authorities remain ghastly indifferent to the pitless process of clique-formation. In fact, they do anything but alleviate the problem. They augment it by drizzling their preference onto the arrogantly elite who sublimely sail over the cowering nerds. Such prejudice merely fuels the already-intense animosity between cliques or between cliques and outcasts. The non-conventional deserve freedom from abuse and cruelty as well as the right to attend school in safety. School authorities have an obligation to establish dignity for everyone, not just the popular and conventional. Discrimination against nonconformists is like racism and other forms of bigotry; so why is it not being tackled the same way but sliding away scot-free instead, denying high school of an egalitarian culture? This is why cliques accept no outsiders. Simply belonging to any of the fabulous diversity of cliques in schools instantly quashes all individuality, trading it in for power and pride as a group. Suddenly, all differences are concealed and everyone [in a clique] looks alike. You cannot tell...
