Sometimes, it's not enough for a school to be divided into cliques to the point of absurdity. Sometimes, different students even have different facilities depending on their affiliation.
Sometimes, this is a purely unofficial system organized by the students, in which a literal clubhouse is used exclusively by members of a certain group as their headquarters. In other settings, however, this actually part of the official school hierarchy and fully endorsed by the teachers: here, different student groups have their own specific dorm rooms, and exclusivity is a protected quality.
For good measure, it's not uncommon for such clubhouses and dorm rooms to be ludicrously elaborate in more exaggerated settings, with access to amenities that real-life students could never realistically have access to.
A subtrope of Absurdly Divided School.
Not to be confused with Smoky Gentlemen's Club, an exclusive clubhouse for upper crust men.
Compare and contrast Urban Segregation.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Assassination Classroom, the academically under-achieving students are actually segregated to a tumbledown shack a long way from the main school building.
Film - Live Action
- In Harriet the Spy, Marion makes a clubhouse that serves as the "spycatchers" headquarters. As part of a montage showing that things are getting better for Harriet and her friends, the clubhouse is shown collapsing.
Literature
- In the Discworld, the Assassins' Guild School believes in the House system and each of its Houses of Study has its own unique character. The offered accomodation - dorms and study rooms - remain stylishly spartan. But, for example, Mrs Beddowes' House note appears to be exclusively for the sons of the nobility, and maintains the old exclusivity of the Guild, in the face of a more egalitarian era and an enforced co-education. Black Widow House is what it says in the label - it educates attitudinal Young Ladies with, possibly, a pragmatic attitude towards men who have outlived their usefulness. Meanwhile B2 and C2 houses, so new and disregarded they don't have names, appear to be the depositories for pupils with "assisted places", Scholarships and bursaries - ie, the Deserving Poor. Every House also has a "lofting"; a clubhouse built by the students themselves at some location on Guild property above ground level, and preferably only accessable to a skilled edificeer. It's considered acceptable for students to raid each other's loftings, but also assumed they will be defended — as with so much of what might be termed "student politics", this is considered good training in Guild skills.
- As it's primarily set in a military academy, Ender's Game features the kids being officially divided into "armies" and given specific barracks across the Battle School - the better to prevent fraternization and ensure competition between armies. Though none of them are given any special amenities, each army has its own particular character, and the the barracks are organized accordingly: Salamander Army is run like a dictatorship under Bonzo Madrid and the barracks only relaxes once he's out of the room, while Rat Army adopts a slobby, jocular demeanor to match Commander Rose "The Nose's" unprofessional attitude.
- While they don't have exclusive dormitories, each Salon has its own exclusive clubroom that members and their exousias and seraphs (read: contracted maids) can come and go from freely until curfew. Each is set up with a different theme, such as The Mauve Manor being a rose garden and the Paradise Palace looking like a kindergarten (all girls who join must be at most 4'9", you see).
- In Harry Potter, each of the four Hogwarts Houses have their own exclusive dormitories, complete with password-locked entrances: Gryffindor has an entire tower to itself, as does Ravenclaw, befitting the idealism of the former and the intellectual high-mindedness of the latter; the down-to-earth Hufflepuff House has a cozy dorm situated one floor below ground level; Slytherin's palatial common room is situated down in the dungeons, befitting their shadowy, underhanded nature.
- In The Magicians, students at Brakebills School Of Magical Pedagogy are divided into magical specialties (AKA Disciplines) and each group has their own exclusive clubhouse, most of them unseen over the course of the series. The Healers reside in the infirmary, the Knowledge students are situated in the attic of the school library, the Naturals live in a tree house somewhere in the surrounding forest, the Illusionists have a floating castle that can only be found by members of the clique, and so on. After his discipline is found to be impossible to determine, Quentin ends up getting sorted alongside Alice into the Physical Kids - practitioners of messy, physics-based magic - and find themselves billeted in a handsome cottage with wine, gourmet cooking and an awful lot of hijinks.
- Because of the Supernatural Elite inherent to the setting, all but one student in the unnamed Wizarding School in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! are teenage Sorcier nobles. The school's housing is segregated by both gender and noble rank, and in the year the story happens, there happened to be an unusual number of royal and ducal children - four of them - causing the children of some lower-rank nobles having to live in quarters below their status.
- Tales of MU: At the start of the story, most of the non-human students at Magisterius University are housed in Harlowe Dorm. While the official reasoning from MU's higher-ups is that this is done so these students don't feel pressured to conform to human ways, it's broadly hinted that there's an air of "keep the freaks contained in one place" behind the decision, and Harlowe residents are sometimes called "Harlots" by the rest of the student body. However, at the start of the main character's second year of studies, many of the Harlowe residents relocate to different dorms with no apparent trouble.
Video Games
- In Bully, just about every clique in the game has their own clubhouses, both on the Bullworth Academy grounds and in the surrounding town. Over the course of the game, Jimmy has the opportunity to acquire some of the secondary clubhouses as his own, usually by defeating the inhabitants in a fist-fight (or a video-game tournament, as is the case with the Nerds):
- The Preppies have their own official dorm, the palatial Harrington House, befitting their status as the school's elite. Off school grounds, they've not only taken over the Glass Jaw Boxing Club in Old Bullworth Vale, but also have an opulent hideout in the abandoned lighthouse on the beach - complete with gaming consoles, Persian rugs and a bar.
- The Greasers commonly hang around the auto repair shop, though they also have a hideout in the abandoned Blue Balls Pool House in New Coventry.
- The Jocks have territory almost exclusively around the sporting fields and gym, and are rarely seen off school grounds. Even their clubhouse remains on campus, as it's actually a storage facility for the sports equipment located right next to the football field.
- The nerds take the cake: they not only hang out at the library, have a secret clubhouse in the basement of the Dragon Wings comic book store in Bullworth Town, but have their own exclusive headquarters at the otherwise-abandoned school observatory - which they've transformed into a fortress. In order to get the Nerds on your side, you have to fight your way into the heavily-guarded observatory... and then defend the place when the Jocks try to storm the building.
- As the lowest clique in the game apart from the Nerds, the Bullies are stuck with the boys' dormitory and only hang out in the parking lot.
- SEES in Persona 3 gets its own dorm; even members who don't go to school are allowed to live there. There's a practical component to this; SEES regularly explores a tower that only appears for a single hour at midnight, and having everyone live together makes it faster and easier to mobilize.
Western Animation
- Recess: The Ashleys have a clubhouse on the playground which they actively patrol and prevent other students from accessing. Breaking into it is a common project for TJ's squad.
Real Life
- Some North American sororities and fraternities have housing specifically for their members.
