# "Summa cum laude" graduation cake design rejected due to perceived vulgarity **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 22, 2018, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619 "2018-05-22T15:33:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/41 "2018-05-23T11:48:23Z")
> [@Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](#): > > no one ever gave me a cake when I graduated. I was expected to graduate. That’s a little sad. ☹ Expectations or not, having some sort of celebration – could be a quiet party at home, could be going out to a restaurant – was a standard way of marking the accomplishment of graduating. It’s usually a fairly low-key, family affair, but cake is absolutely a normal part of it (though I don’t personally remember cake at my college graduation.) I mean, I was expected to turn 8 years old and 9 years old and 10 years, etc., and I still got a cake out of it! This was at least somewhat earned. ---
**Author:** ![Dag\_Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@Dag\_Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dag_Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/42 "2018-05-23T12:50:34Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Actually I think the decorating IS all automated. This is one cake that you probably don’t want hand decorated. Just in case Ron is working that day. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/43 "2018-05-23T13:40:33Z")
The thing that annoys me most about this story is the mother’s reaction to it. They refunded her money, gave her a gift card, and apologized, for a mistake the software designer made. And she acts as if her son has been irreparably damaged. Good grief lady! ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/44 "2018-05-23T14:47:06Z")
> [@Grrr](#): > > And she acts as if her son has been irreparably damaged. He has! Before this happened, her son had no idea that “cum” was a dirty word, or even that there _were_ dirty words. Now, as a result of going online and trying to find out what “cum” means, the son has gotten addicted to bukkake, felching, and German scat porn. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/45 "2018-05-23T14:58:15Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#): > > Fun fact: “Valedictorian” does _not_ refer to the student who graduates at the top of the class. It refers to the person who delivers the final, closing statement (“valediction”) at the graduation ceremony, who is often – but not always – the student who graduates at the top of the class. Woohoo! I just found out that I was the valedictorian of my high school class! > [@DSeid](#): > > Actually I think the decorating IS all automated. Still a request being censored should trigger an automatic notification that such is occurring. It did: _“She ordered the $70 sheet cake online through Publix, but she was alerted profane or special characters weren’t allowed when she requested the bakery include Jacob’s honor.”_ ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/46 "2018-05-23T15:39:22Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > He has! > > Before this happened, her son had no idea that “cum” was a dirty word, or even that there _were_ dirty words. > > Now, as a result of going online and trying to find out what “cum” means, the son has gotten addicted to bukkake, felching, and German scat porn. Deeper irony: I bet that the defective “bad word checker” database wouldn’t catch any of those phrases. 😃 (Well, maybe “porn”, because (A) bluenoses have to have a name for the thing they hate, and (B) it would also catch perfectly legitimate Thai personal names.) No, I’m not going onto the Pube-licks cake decorating website to find out. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/47 "2018-05-23T15:46:29Z")
> [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > _“She ordered the $70 sheet cake online through Publix, but she was alerted profane or special characters weren’t allowed when she requested the bakery include Jacob’s honor.”_ I think **dseid** meant the event should have alerted a customer service representative involved in the cake-decorating process to intervene and apply a sanity check to the software’s moronic response. If so, that would be a good idea, except I doubt the process would have a CSR, because customer service costs money – that’s why the process was automated to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/48 "2018-05-23T17:11:43Z")
Wow, I had never ever heard of Latin honors for high school grads before this. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/49 "2018-05-23T17:24:46Z")
**“If I knew you were cumin’ I’d have baked a cake”** > [@](#): > > Well, well, well, look who’s here. > I haven’t seen you in many a year. > If I knew you were cumin’ I’d ‘ve baked a cake, > baked a cake, baked a cake. > If I knew you were cumin’ I’d 've baked a cake. > How-ja do. How-ja do, How-ja do. I am sorry, Eileen Barton. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/50 "2018-05-23T17:32:48Z")
Ewww, cake with cumin in it. ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/51 "2018-05-23T17:54:18Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > Internet filtering is no joke. Beaver College changed their name to Arcadia University in 2001 partly because prospective students were having trouble finding their website via web search. Yeah, back around that time, I once had a passing interest in learning to make my own sausages from scratch. Wanting to look into the needed equipment, I Googled “sausage stuffing.” The results I got were not was I was expecting. At all. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/52 "2018-05-23T20:46:18Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Actually I think the decorating IS all automated. Still a request being censored should trigger an automatic notification that such is occurring. > > Do some home school programs have “virtual” classes with standardized assessments shared across their populations? I was under the impression that such is the case and that the honor would be based on relative performance on those assessments. Could be wrong. My niece is in a virtual high school program that sounds a lot like this. As for decorating being automated, I suppose that depends on how you order it. A couple years ago, my mom ordered a cake (by walking up to the counter and choosing the one she wanted) and wanted “Happy Trifecta Birthday” written on it, because my brother, my aforementioned niece (his daughter) and I all have birthdays within a week of each other, and she had to explain to the decorator what a trifecta was, how to spell it, and why she wanted that word on the cake. Maybe now I know why they asked her so many questions. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/53 "2018-05-23T20:48:14Z")
> [@GESancMan](#): > > Yeah, back around that time, I once had a passing interest in learning to make my own sausages from scratch. Wanting to look into the needed equipment, I Googled “sausage stuffing.” The results I got were not was I was expecting. At all. Someone on another website had a young child who liked stories about bears, and when he Googled that, he did so not knowing that in the gay community, a “bear” is a hefty man with lots of body hair. Hoo boy, did he find that out. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/54 "2018-05-23T21:20:33Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > It was an online system with a rude word filter that wasn’t smart enough to know Latin phrases. Kind of waters down the “people are morons” headline narrative. Only slightly, because the person involved also included it in the special instructions. And even if that was also censored, it is a fixed phrase, so they should still have been able to figure out what word was supposed to be there. Or at least figured out that they didn’t want — on their cake. Leave it out, and at least it could be fixed later. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that big a deal. But I do think there is still the moronic element involved. Or possibly the idea “I know it’s supposed to be cum laude, but I might get in trouble for writing that word, so I better not.” And, yes, good software should be able to get around the Scunthorpe problem by now. Just make an exception for certain fixed phrases. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/55 "2018-05-23T22:13:51Z")
Self-styled vigilantes attacked the home of a hospital paediatrician after apparently confusing her professional title with the word “paedophile”. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/56 "2018-05-23T22:32:52Z")
The card game Magic: the Gathering has an online database where you can see all of the cards, and comment on them. And for a while, that comment system had a similarly-moronic filter. What made it especially annoying is that some cards use a mechanic called “cumulative upkeep”. Or, rather, “\*\*\*ulative upkeep”. Even worse was a card named “Rootwater thief”, because the system for linking to a specific card involved using the card’s name, and the censor broke all of those links. Fortunately that card didn’t get mentioned all that often (aside, of course, from complaints about the auto-censor). ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/57 "2018-05-24T02:26:57Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Ewww, cake with cumin in it. Or, more likely, an Indian doughnut with cumin and cinnamon 🙂 We had a communication failure at work many years ago, where the client’s email filter automatically discarded any mail that contained the words “do the right thing”. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/58 "2018-05-24T02:43:00Z")
People should just stop writing shit on cakes, it causes way too many problems. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/59 "2018-05-24T02:48:13Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > People should just stop writing shit on cakes I’m pretty sure that’s a forbidden word. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619/60 "2018-05-24T03:11:35Z")
This far in the thread without a Magnum Cum Laude wisecrack? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summa-cum-laude-graduation-cake-design-rejected-due-to-perceived-vulgarity/814619.md?page=4)