Outside of a Latin classroom, the humble macron ( ¯ ) is one of the rarer diacritics; the odd student might see it above an English poem in full scansion, ably marking the presence of a long vowel, but it is not even close to the popularity of the acute ( ´ ) or diaeresis ( ¨ ).

Why would such an unfamiliar character matter to us English-speakers? Well, now we come to a more fantastical hypothesis, but one for which there is indeed much evidence: what if the M in the STEM Center’s name stands for macra? Specifically, what if the STEM Center’s name is a coded reference to an insidious plot, perpetrated at our very school, to sow mayhem and chaos across the globe by purposely mismacronizing Latin texts?

For one thing, this would explain why the Center closes at 4:00—to give this cabal a place to work in privacy. Furthermore, this also explains why Mr. Morales, McQuaid’s Latin teacher (and servant of an interdimensional being by whose beneficence the Shield exists), does not require his students to put macra on text they write or type. Presumably, he knows that, by the time the texts return to him, the macra will be entirely incorrect.

Furthermore, this explains why my Dungeons and Dragons group were kicked out of a STEM Center computer lab. Sure, Dr. Parks said it was due to a lack of adult supervision, and sure, there was in fact no adult in the room to supervise us, but clearly the real reason is that whoever has been mismacronizing these texts did not want us finding evidence of their diabolical plot on the computers near which we were playing.

While various members of the McQuaid Jesuit student community have maintained suspicions about this subject, I was suddenly approached by a mysterious source—a short man, with a relatively clean beard and mustache, who wished to remain anonymous. To honor his wishes, this article refers to him as “Porales.”

According to Mr. Porales, this anarchic scheme explains more than just completely correct choices by administrators or sensical closing times for facilities not in use: “At first, that seismograph machine did just what it was supposed to do: detect earthquakes, reinforce scientific principles with hands-on learning, and so forth,” he said, increasingly agitated. “But eventually, someone discovered how to use the machine to manually mismacronize Latin texts.” (He explained that there was no Internet at the time, which some Shield readers may find surprising.) “So it was ‘put out of commission.’ Once the STEM Center opened and the mismacronizing war could finally expand into the cyber realm, they abandoned the manual machine. That’s why they converted it back to a seismograph! To allay suspicion, and it’s like nothing ever happened. Now, get off my lawn!”

Mr. Porales provided documents to the Shield with an illegible signature under a simple sentence: “BRING BACK THE SEISMOGRAPH.” He did not leave any of his contact information, and the next two times I saw someone who looked like him, I was somehow immediately certain it was actually just a strange-looking tree.

If the M in STEM Center stands for “macra,” our school is obviously involved in an insidious plot to cause minor mispronunciations of a seldom-heard, perhaps even dead, language, and so bring a final, dreaded anarchy upon the face of the Earth. Woe betide us.