By James Applegate

CATACOMBS—Two weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump signed the Sticker-Vinyl Act, which couples a demographic tax on all users of the vinyl stickers popular with merchandise offices with a massive tariff on the vinyl used to make such stickers. To understand the impact that the Sticker-Vinyl Act has had, the B&S reached out to Dr. Rita Banna Bouhques, Professor of Political Science and History. The author of New York Times bestseller “A Sticker a Day Keeps the Dictator Away”, Dr. Banna Bouhques teaches such courses as “Political Stickers as Resistance” and “Political Stickers in American History” at the college and recently demonstrated for sticker-user rights alongside thousands of protestors at the Iowa State House.

Dr. Bouhques tells us that the act has had a devastating impact on the college’s community of people who drown their water bottles and laptops in dozens of political stickers. “It hasn’t just been economic, either. This has initiated a torrent of stickerphobia at every level of American society.” 

Dr. Banna Bouhques goes on: “Trump stoked the sick flames of a squalid, hateful, stickerphobic populism. Look around! The National Database for Finding Clever Vinyl Stickers was scrubbed from the web. He’s fired half of the federal Department of Self-Expression Through Merchandise. This is a clear and concentrated assault on the material rights and forms of expression open to this community!” Dr. Banna Bouhques seizes my shoulders in a vice-like grip. “This is INTOLERABLE,” she screams into my face.

After Campo Steve liberates me from Dr. Banna Bouhques’s grasp, I venture into the catacombs to see how the sticker-using community has reacted. The JRC-HSSC catacombs are a little-known relic from the college’s Congregationalist days that were first built and inhabited by oppressed Catholic students in order to clandestinely gobble up Jesus. Now, the college’s sticker-using community calls the catacombs home. Over and over again, I hear the same tragic story: bank accounts devastated by increased prices, frenzied pre-tariff sticker-buying sprees devastating Etsy and Redbubble markets, retirement savings plans ruined…To make matters worse, Dr. Banna Bouhques says that economic crises (like the one that will definitely happen soon) disproportionately affect members of the sticker-using community.

The Sticker-Vinyl Act comes on the heels of a firestorm of other stickerphobic policies. Since January, members of the sticker-using community have lost the right to indicate their favorite stickers on government IDs, join the military, or indicate their sticker-status on the census. “They’re trying to erase us,” says Vert U. Sihgnull ’26, one weary sticker-user. “We’ve fought for acceptance for so long, and this is only going to make everything worse for us on the outside.” Rumors have even circulated about members of the sticker-using community being deported to Stickeribya.

The walls of the catacombs are covered with ruined, peeling stickers. But the sticker-using community can’t replace them. Sihgnull tells us, “Our being was in those stickers. We’re losing our traditions, losing our ways. We’re being colonized. Without the stickers, we’re losing our ability to communicate with each other and with our past.”

One respected sticker-poet in the catacombs wrote the following stirring lines:

First, they came for the transgender community—and no one said anything.

Then, they came for the immigrant community—and no one said anything.

Then, they came for the female-identifying community—and no one said anything.

Then, they came for the protesting community—and no one said anything.

Then, they came for the sticker-using community—and no one said anything.

Last, they came for you, and there was no one left to make a sticker about it. 

Overwhelmed by the scene in the catacombs, we leave and ask Dr. Bouhques about how we can possibly continue to fight for sticker-user rights, or at least get a program together to make them sandwiches or something. Are signs of solidarity effective? She shakes her head somberly. “No, public signs of solidarity will only weaken our forces. We have to fight in a way that no one, not the government or even the public, will know who we are.”

But we at the B&S have done our journalistic due diligence: weeks ago, Dr. Banna Bouhques’s social media pages were replete with pictures political stickers. Go to her Insta page now? Nothing but residue. Others have followed suit: after the Sticker-Vinyl Act was announced, so-called “stickerfluencers”, “academics”, and “activists” performed an astonishing vanishing act on the web, saving themselves from the worst of the fallout. But with a little digging, you too can spot the imposters: just look for the crusty sticker-grime on their laptops. They won’t getting past us. Deport her, Campo Steve.