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[quote=Anonymous]"I went to TC- went on to UVA and then worked overseas and came back to get my MBA from UVA (in-state tuition is a major bonus- plus outstanding school). Anyway, I did meet the people that the PP mentioned- it does remind me so much of the cliques of Maury and some other schools that were predominantly white and quite capable of sending their kids to private but didn't. Those kids certainly did bond and create a clique together- they were so not inclusive and - hum- arrogant and some other words. This is given we were at a public high school and they made it clear they FELT above others. So- yes, if your child goes keep in mind the cliques are huge. I could name so many cliques - the burn outs, the jocks, the "popular" since I could have gone to a private .. BUT, it's such a large school that it really is easy not to care. I personally would not send my children to TC Williams- despite that academically- it was outstanding in AP and honors classes (which I took). I just don't see the sense to send my kids to such a jungle .. this is my own personal opinion. We don't have the $ to go private so I never considered living in Alexandria. We live in Fairfax County. "

Thank you!  I, too,  graduated from TC and yes the Crew cliques were the worst. This was in the 1980s, after going ACPS the whole way. Yes, they made it abundantly clear they FELT above everyone else.  They were almost exclusively white and extremely affluent.  Our family was white and affluent, but not extremely so, so I wasn't good enough to be part of them. (Example--today my parent's house is worth $700k, but their houses are now worth $1.2-3 million.)  But what saddens me the most is nobody seems to have really heard or listened to each other.  All races and socioeconomic groups were together, but we were told to sit down and shut up by our teachers, and the curriculum never really addressed any of the inequalities we were living, despite their obvious historical roots in slavery. No one controlled the way we socialized---nor did any teacher mitigate all the sharp cuts of exclusion and shunning that went on to extremes for some "outcasts" who were even lower on the totem pole than myself.  I felt shunned and terrified in every direction, and I literally had one best friend who I clung to for dear life. The cursing, the stories overheard of sexual exploits and drinking that occurred at Crew, Mock UN Club, theater--all the Popular's social circles--were just appalling to me, and I came to be a misanthrope when I wasn't suicidal. I wanted to vomit over most of what I heard.  The African American kids seemed immersed in their social circles and didn't seem to feel snubbed by these white snobs the way upper middle class kids on the edge of affluence were.  It just caused a raging boiling in my blood that  got stirred when again I saw that same ilk of mothers talking together at elementary school pick up in the very affluent neighborhoods of Alexandria.  I couldn't take it another day, and we moved to Arlington.  At least here my daughter has been able to establish a much larger group of friends in her school than I was able to---a diverse group ethnically, but a similar group socio-economically.  She is still brought down by the antics of "the populars," but the degree of insularity is just not the same as it is in such a stark environment of inequality as TC is. 
The whole visionary dream of Martin Luther King was never realized the way I experienced it at TC.  I never made any black friends, and almost no white friends either.  It didn't matter if you were kind, or frostily cold and civil, it only mattered what clothes you wore and who your parents were.  Rather than inspiring a belief that all people are equal, it revealed ugly depths of favoritism, snobbishness, and opportunism--the populars would brown nose their teachers to look like the "All-American wholesome good kid" when they were anything but.  I could totally understand why the hippies wanted to drop out, because these people were a lost cause, in my experience. 
Inequality hurts everyone, most of all the people at the top who can't see that they are hurting...their lifestyle of cutting exclusion and snobbishness is unhealthy, because it is not based in truth.  The truth is we are all humble mortals, and we all need meaningful work, healthy food, safe neighborhoods and schools and community.  These things aren't possible when such snobbery and bitterness exists, and so I am not surprised one bit that someone like Donald Trump can arise and harness this disgust at hypocrisy to his own advantage.  It is the wrong answer, but when people can clearly see how unequal our society is, they become ripe for the picking by someone like Trump. It is really sad, but I expect things to continue to get worse before they get better. [/quote]

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