Someone with a degree in women’s studies is decorating cakes at Publix.
Via Charleston Post and Courier:
Saturday was Jacob Kosinski’s big day. His whole family, many from out of town, saw the Charleston, South Carolina, student graduate from his Christian-based homeschool program with a 4.79 grade point average and the coveted honor of summa cum laude.
His mother, Cara Koscinski organized a graduation party for her 18-year-old son. For the occasion, she ordered a cake online from her nearest grocery store, Publix, which lets customers build their own cakes complete with a customized inscription, which they enter into a little message box.
Carefully, she typed in the message she wanted on the cake: “Congrats Jacob! Summa Cum Laude class of 2018.”
The Publix software was unhappy with the word – cum. In Latin, cum is the preposition “with,” as in summa cum laude “with the highest distinction.” To the little box on the Publix website, however, the word meant something else and its sophisticated algorithm, alert for naughty words, returned a little message that said “profane/special characters not allowed.” It substituted three hyphens for “cum.”
But there was still hope. The Publix form included a section for “special instructions” for the bakery, in which Koscinski explained that Summa Cum Laude was a Latin term for high academic honor and was not profane. She included a link to a website explaining the meaning of Summa Cum Laude and said she didn’t think much about it afterward.
Koscinski said she was so busy preparing things for the celebration, that she sent her husband and sister to the store to get some last minute items and to pick up the cake.
When they returned, everyone gathered around the cake. When they opened the box, there it was: “Congrats Jacob! Summa – Laude Class of 2018.”
Jacob was “absolutely humiliated,” Koscinski said to The Post. “It was unbelievable. I ordered the special graduation edition cake. I can’t believe I’m the first one to ever write “Summa Cum Laude” on a cake.
Koscinski said she then had to explain why the grocery store censored “cum” from Jacob’s cake to her 70-year-old mother while Jacob’s friends laughed uncontrollably.