It’s a typical Sunday in Ladd Library — students are typing away, eyes eagerly locked onto screens in front of them, completing assignments that they’ve put off all weekend.
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.
Decorating a laptop can help to “anchor students and give them a feeling of comfort,” says Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano. “They 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.”
Each sticker on a student’s laptop contributes to their individual story in ways both big and small. While some students sport gold stars from classmates — a sign of encouragement from one student to another — others display a bigger piece of their identity.
John Campana ‘26 of Detroit shares meaningful aspects of his life in two decorative ways. On his laptop, his favorite sticker is the “one I got from my tattoo shop back home.” Campana has two tattoos, “both really meaningful to me, and I got them at incredibly pivotal moments in my life.” Campana’s first tattoo is a lotus flower, reflecting a deeply personal time in his life. The second shows the Roman numerals of his late grandfather’s birth year, a living memory of a beloved family member.
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 “Stevie.”)
Several students display their commitment to the community on their portable devices. “Take this Green Dot sticker for example,” says Alden Zhang ‘26 of Bethesda, Md. “I’m a Junior Advisor this year, and I got this sticker after completing training for Green Dot,” the college’s bystander intervention program.
Other stickers that adorn Zhang’s 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.
Amanda Power ’26 of Scottsdale, Ariz., has a laptop case in a lovely shade of pink — but it’s bare for now. “I’ve got sticker-commitment issues,” she laughs. “I 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.”
Some laptops are like pages on a passport, detailing places that the owner has visited in the most recent years. Moses Hufford-Bucklin ‘26 of Delco, Pa., collects stickers from nearly every location he visits — from his annual family vacation to Acadia National Park to a quick trip in Tennessee.
“I’ve been visiting Acadia each summer since I can remember,” says Hufford-Bucklin. “Maine 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.”
Seniors have curated impressive sticker collections over their years spent at Bates. “I started collecting stickers during the beginning of high school and built it up as I went,” says Maddy Ewell ‘24 of Ridgewood, N.J.
“I added a Bates sticker after I was accepted — 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.”
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.
Downstairs, the college’s 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.
“A lot of clubs and sports teams have been coming in here to design and print their own stickers,” says Laurie Henderson, P&P’s director. From celebratory stickers marking the NCAA win by the women’s second varsity eight boat last year, to stickers promoting Take Note, a Bates a cappella group, P&P has been helping these organizations get their names out into the Bates community and beyond.
Stickers hold so much more than initially meets the eye, and make for great conversation starters, says Kelley-Romano.
“If I see a student with a sticker from a cool place, or of a band I know — we can talk about that. Or, I don’t recognize the significance, I can ask and learn more about them.”
Not only does Kelley-Romano collect and display stickers of her own, she also hands them out to students in her rhetoric classes. “I 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!
“It’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.”
Categories Society and culture Student Life
