Early last week, I acquired a green square sticker that said “brat but it’s the cave” on it, which I promptly adhered to my water bottle. Immediately, friends and acquaintances were asking me where it came from, letting me know how cool it was and so on. This is something that I’m sure many Carls have experienced over the years. However, at the ‘brat night’ event, a number of these stickers were readily available, and in the days since, little has been said about how the green of the sticker perfectly complements the green of my Owala; that’s right, it’s an Owala. Once I recovered from the tragic lack of attention, this situation did lead me to wonder: where do all the ‘cool’ stickers at Carleton come from, and what determines the longevity of a stickers’ relevance? So the Carletonian took to the streets, and then to the academic buildings, to observe the role of these stickers, their origin and their social prominence. Our initial research allowed us to separate popular stickers at Carleton into three major categories. 

There are a few stickers that are simply all-timers – many of us have surely been intimidated by a cool upperclassman in our humanities class whose laptop features that Pirates Booty Rotblatt sticker representative of an age long gone by. And who hasn’t envied that one friend who has the nice pastel sticker of the fourth libe windows, perhaps squarely on their laptop, perhaps mocking you at every Carletonian meeting for not simply going to the libe during New Student Week last year? 

Then there’s a secondary class of stickers that are cute, but less valuable through their generic quality and readily-available-ness. These are things like the flower stickers with a ‘C’ in the middle often given out at events or found in random offices, or the more yearly heart-tattoo KRLX sticker. During your first fall, you may view these as hot commodities, but over time you come to realize that they are more or less everywhere.

Finally, there’s a bottom tier of Carleton stickers comprised simply of name/logo only stickers, the kind of thing you buy for a dollar at the bookstore, the kind of thing you and I both have on our laptops. But while these stickers are the only ones explicitly bought and sold, we were shocked to discover that they are by far the least expensive ones around. 

It seems that the coolness of these stickers is not in fact arbitrary, and does have a commonly accepted trade value. The list of values, rather than being live online, is maintained through an assigned officials’ door whiteboard. This official is given the opportunity to take their pick of the stickers before they are released to any broader public, in order to prevent insider sticker trading. Once the values, which are measured in dining dollars, are assigned each month, trading may begin.

We spoke to several current students about their experience with the sale of stickers. Naomi Horne, a sophomore, unofficially and off the record said “I was recently able to sell a spare Gould Library windows sticker to a close personal friend. It was just sitting in a storage box from last year. Nothing gives me more joy than turning a 200-dining-dollar profit from a transactional relationship.” An unimportant freshman said “I collected a bunch of KRLX stickers at the engagement fair, and a lot more people say hi to me with that on my water bottle. I don’t even have a radio show.” Finally, Zoe Roettger, a preeminent sophomore, said “I was not prepared last year for the bloodbath to get a Gould Library sticker. It happened during New Student Week, and nobody was ready. It was kind of like the Hunger Games. I haven’t been able to look those people I fought for those stickers in the eye, even a year later, because of the shame we all still feel about our conduct in that crucial moment. But it’s all worth it – because of the envy I see in my coworkers’ eyes at the Carletonian every week as they stare at my laptop, not knowing how intentional it is. It is a real badge of honor and perhaps my greatest achievement yet at Carleton.”

It’s not yet clear what the value of the ‘brat but it’s the cave’ sticker will be next term, or even next year, in this volatile underground market. What we do know is that the College does not endorse any sticker trading, and with a heavy heart, the Carletonian agrees – we cannot recommend anyone cause emotional or physical injury to their friends in the name of little bits of plastic. That being said, with our former comic artist graduated, owners of pre-24-25 academic year Carletonian stickers can expect to see a steep increase in value this term, and should keep them in a safe place.