Once you get one, there is no turning back. The removal process is long and arduous and after the commitment of the first one, they become addicting. Often employers scoff at them at job interviews. But after all, they are simply signs of individuality and they are becoming more and more popular. I am talking about stickers—corrupting the laptops of Jewell students.
The campus is split concerning laptop stickers. The adhesive-liberals see them as channels of expression, while conservatives consider them to be as embarrassing as that cheap Tweety Bird tattoo your mom got when she was in college on spring break.
“I don’t really think of the permanence of the stickers. I just represent,” said Dalton Nelson, first-year mathematics major, who happens to be heavily stickered.
Clearly, to some radicals permanence is relative. After all, one could always cover a first-year mess-up of a Taylor Swift adhesive with the clearly better choice of a “Stay Humble, Hustle Hard” sticker.
Laptop stickers have become signals not just of individuality, but also of status or lack of thereof.
“I find it necessary to showcase stickers from all the exclusive places I have travelled—or like to pretend I’ve been. It makes me seem worldly,” Nelson said.
Others are passionately opposed to these sticky pictures
“It’s like going to the tattoo parlor, pointing at a rose on the wall saying, ‘I’ll take that one.’ The perceived individuality constructed by stickers is merely an illusion,” said Alex Holden, junior economics, philosophy, communication and ACT-In major and ardent laptop sticker dissenter.
The irony of laptop stickers is a popular argument among dissenters. The idea is summed up in a single adhesive reading, “I like to express my individuality through mass produced stickers.”
Right wing students shy away from the stick for aesthetic reasons, just as liberal stickerists clutter their computers for a messy look, showing that the two camps are divided on principles of taste.
“My Mac is sleek. Steve Jobs created it that way for a reason—you don’t put a bumper sticker on a Benz,” said Holden.
There are factions within the groups that vary on less permanent use of laptop case stickage. Generally, economic pressures dealing with the high price of Macs affect this argument.
“I used to put stickers on my laptop case, I’m a henna type of guy, I don’t like to commit,” said Holden, admitting to a past dip on the wild side and a bit of liberal arts hypocrisy.
Recently, two Jewell students got into a brawl over having the same sticker on their laptops. Like two girls at senior prom wearing the same dress, the two young men ripped hair and shouted superficial insults. The brawl ended with one of the students tossing the other over the second floor railing in the union.
Sticker violence continues as a new campus gang has formed, Students Against Irresponsible Stickage (SAIS). The gang calls itself an organization that aims to eradicate the display of poor taste.
All photos taken by Brianna Steiert