Proud mom orders ‘Summa Cum Laude’ cake online. Publix censors it: Summa … Laude.
Saturday was Jacob Kosinski’s big day. His whole family, many from out of town, saw the Charleston, S.C. student graduate from his Christian-based home-school program with a 4.89 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 marked “cake message option.”
Carefully, she typed in the words she wanted on the cake: “Congrats Jacob! Summa Cum Laude class of 2018.”
The cake message option Publix box 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 strict algorithm, vigilant for naughty words, returned a message that said “profane/special characters not allowed.” Cum, which contains no special characters, was deemed profane.
In place of cum, three hyphens appeared, as they do for some other profanities in family newspapers: Summa — Laude.
Algorithms man. Algorithms.
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