Seminarians blamed
Last month, to commemorate Holy Cross Heritage month, the Old College seminarians began selling special edition Tiny Saints. The lineup of newly minted miracle workers included campus figures such as St. André Bessette, Fr. Sorin, and Basil Moreau, as well as Holy Cross heroes Patrick Peyton, Columba O’Neill, and Jacques Dujarié. The Saints took campus by storm, sported on everything including backpacks, gym bags, rosaries, car keys, and charm bracelets.
But now that Holy Cross Heritage Month is over, students trying to purchase the kawaii curates are in a bind. The plastic clergymen were a temporary fundraising item, and cannot be bought outside of Old College.
Desperate to purchase the limited edition abbés, students have formed underground resale groups to complete their collections. The Saints can be flipped at prices as high as 15 dollars, or 60 dollars for the full set. These resellers are working outside of the Student Shop network, thus preventing the Student Activities Office (SAO) from cashing in on the merchandise. SAO’s Campus Income Commissioner, Christine Commerce, had this to say: “We are working tirelessly to prevent the sale of copyrighted Holy Cross figures on campus. These resellers are taking advantage of students and appropriating Notre Dame iconography for personal gain. Any student caught reselling Tiny Saints will be apprehended and forced to attend a disciplinary hearing on the Saturday morning most inconvenient to them. We at SAO fully support legitimate on-campus businesses, such as the Hammes Bookstore, where you can purchase approved Tiny Saints for 20 dollars apiece, as well as secular meditation candles and witchcraft cookbooks.”
The fervor around preventing T-Saint sales has led to a few wrong calls. One student, Katharine Mary Irish, says that her backpack was stripped of its Tiny Saint collection while she was working in Duncan Student Center. “They took my Fr. Sorin!” she lamented. “I bought that legally at Old College the first chance I could! Besides, everyone knows unboxed Tiny Saints fetch higher prices. Why would I shoot myself in the foot?”
One student reseller, who wished to remain nameless for his safety, had this to say: “I was picking up a shipment last week when I was the victim of an SAO raid. I have a seminarian who helps me acquire my merchandise, and we were standing by the St. Joseph statue pretending to smoke stogies when a bunch of people in Notre Dame-branded ski masks and SAO quarter zips stormed Old College! Next thing we know, they’re taking out boxes and searching them on the lawn. But I didn’t see any Tiny Saints; I don’t think they found it. I’m still financially hurt from my spring break trip to Punta Cana, so this little side hustle needs to keep paying.”
The source then looked around furtively and whispered, “I’ve said too much,” before deploying a smoke bomb and running off into the LaFortune basement. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Katiebelle Thompson is definitely not a rare Tiny Saints dealer from the backwoods of Virginia. She also doesn’t sell her homemade beer, The Breviary Brew, in the alley behind Niewland Hall on alternate Fridays. Parties interested in either should definitely rethink their life choices, and not email cthomp23@nd.edu.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, modified
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