{"id":157429,"date":"2023-09-28T14:11:45","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T18:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=157429"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:55:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T18:55:34","slug":"sticker-shock-bates-students-talk-about-their-laptop-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2023\/09\/28\/sticker-shock-bates-students-talk-about-their-laptop-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Sticker shock? Bates students talk about their laptop artwork"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s a typical Sunday in Ladd Library \u2014 students are typing away, eyes eagerly locked onto screens in front of them, completing assignments that they\u2019ve put off all weekend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the students immerse themselves in work, their personalities are still on display for onlookers to discover: The 13-inch canvas in front of them is painted with stickers representing their interests, affections, and identities, from favorite vacation locations and home-town slogans to Bates activities and social causes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decorating a laptop can help to “anchor students and give them a feeling of comfort,\u201d says Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano. \u201cThey can look at their [laptop] and see a sticker from a friend back home, or one that represents an experience they had with a loved one. College can be very disorienting, and I think stickers are one way to remember and express who we are.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
John Campana ’26 of Detroit has a slew of stickers promoting his favorite band, Fleetwood Mac. (The Campana family dog is named \u201cStevie.\u201d) (Hannah Kothari ’26 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Each sticker on a student\u2019s laptop contributes to their individual story in ways both big and small. While some students sport gold stars from classmates \u2014 a sign of encouragement from one student to another \u2014 others display a bigger piece of their identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Campana \u201826 of Detroit shares meaningful aspects of his life in two decorative ways. On his laptop, his favorite sticker is the \u201cone I got from my tattoo shop back home.\u201d Campana has two tattoos, \u201cboth really meaningful to me, and I got them at incredibly pivotal moments in my life.\u201d Campana\u2019s first tattoo is a lotus flower, reflecting a deeply personal time in his life. The second shows the Roman numerals of his late grandfather\u2019s birth year, a living memory of a beloved family member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere on his laptop are a slew of stickers promoting his favorite band, Fleetwood Mac, for which he admits a kind of obsession. (The Campana family dog is named \u201cStevie.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several students display their commitment to the community on their portable devices. \u201cTake this Green Dot sticker for example,\u201d says Alden Zhang \u201826 of Bethesda, Md. \u201cI\u2019m a Junior Advisor this year, and I got this sticker after completing training for Green Dot,\u201d the college\u2019s bystander intervention program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The laptop belonging to Alden Zhang \u201826 of Bethesda, Md., has a Green Dot sticker at right, reflecting Zhang’s training with the college\u2019s bystander intervention program. (Hannah Kothari ’26 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other stickers that adorn Zhang\u2019s laptop capture a meaningful aspect of her identity: her favorite music artist (Camila Cabello), her high school (Sidwell Friends), and her favorite hobby (running), evoked by a “Rise and Run” sticker.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amanda Power \u201926 of Scottsdale, Ariz., has a laptop case in a lovely shade of pink \u2014 but it’s bare for now. \u201cI\u2019ve got sticker-commitment issues,\u201d she laughs. \u201cI feel like putting a sticker on my laptop is such a commitment. I know that people will see these stickers every day, and that they will instantly make assumptions about my interests and my identity as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some laptops are like pages on a passport, detailing places that the owner has visited in the most recent years. Moses Hufford-Bucklin \u201826 of Delco, Pa., collects stickers from nearly every location he visits \u2014 from his annual family vacation to Acadia National Park to a quick trip in Tennessee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been visiting Acadia each summer since I can remember,\u201d says Hufford-Bucklin. \u201cMaine has always been such a special place to me, it only feels right that most of my stickers have been collected from shops up and down the Maine coast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cMaine has always been such a special place to me,” says Moses Hufford-Bucklin \u201826 of Delco, Pa., hence the Maine-themed stickers. (Hannah Kothari ’26 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Seniors have curated impressive sticker collections over their years spent at Bates. \u201cI started collecting stickers during the beginning of high school and built it up as I went,\u201d says Maddy Ewell \u201824 of Ridgewood, N.J. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI added a Bates sticker after I was accepted \u2014 one of the pine-scented ones from Admission. I also have one from a Portland coffee shop, but my favorite one is a sticker that a friend gave me: a classic Beethoven portrait with sunglasses edited onto him.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the College Store, located in Kalperis Hall, decals for various sports tend to be a best-seller, says Gail St. Pierre, store director, with a close second being the Bates wordmark<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Downstairs, the college\u2019s Post & Print operation now has the capacity to produce stickers for the campus community, meaning that students can walk into the P&P sticker haven and ask the staff to produce a self-designed sticker for the low starting price of 70 cents a sticker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of clubs and sports teams have been coming in here to design and print their own stickers,\u201d says Laurie Henderson, P&P’s director. From celebratory stickers marking the NCAA win by the women\u2019s second varsity eight boat last year, to stickers promoting Take Note, a Bates a<\/em> cappella<\/em> group, P&P has been helping these organizations get their names out into the Bates community and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A selection of stickers produced by the college’s Post & Print operation captures the diversity of interests in the Bates community. (Hannah Kothari ’26 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stickers hold so much more than initially meets the eye, and make for great conversation starters, says Kelley-Romano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I see a student with a sticker from a cool place, or of a band I know \u2014 we can talk about that. Or, I don’t recognize the significance, I can ask and learn more about them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only does Kelley-Romano collect and display stickers of her own, she also hands them out to students in her rhetoric classes. \u201cI like to give students the sticker to see where they put it. Some put it on their notebook, some just put it in their pocket, but some put it on their water bottle, phone case, or laptop, and I’ve gotta say, it makes me feel happy when they publicly display their stickers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s really just a symbol of a particular moment, but it’s an educational moment shared and I think celebrating moments is really what it’s all about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even when Bates students immerse themselves in their work, typing away on their laptops, their personalities are still on display.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1713,"featured_media":157437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"From activities and slogans to social causes, students share the stories behind their stickers.","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[224,11012],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture","category-student-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1713"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157429"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158020,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157429\/revisions\/158020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}