Cant aggregate JS because JQuery 1.8 is aggregated even if not enabled

for a few weeks i had been scratching my head as to why the PANELS LAYOUT interface on my site had broken. it wasn't until i had some time to look at the rendered code that i noticed that JQuery 1.8 was being aggregated even though i have set the module to aggregate 1.7 only. i did have CDN backup on, so i turned that off, but to no avail, no change.

this site is a custom distro built on top of PANOPOLY and using a custom RADIX subtheme. the backend admin theme isn't built with bootstrap (it's a custom subtheme of SHINY). i looked high and low thru all my modules and grepped them to death and not one of them had a query or link to Jq 1.8.

i finally turned off JS aggregation and VOILA! my panels layout interface works again. but this sucks.

so am asking: is there a way to exclude Jq 1.8 from the themes so that I can turn-on JS aggregation? but, even if there's a workaround, shouldnt JqU NOT allow aggregation of the code?

need some insight about this weird bug :\