To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]”, which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

St. Mary’s College does not appear in early Intercollegiate Bureau lists from 1927 or 1948, so the IBAC might not have assigned the college a hood lining until the late 1940s or 1950s. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described St. Mary’s hood lining as red with a white chevron. As this duplicated the hood lining the Bureau had already assigned Dickinson College (cardinal with a white chevron) between 1895 and 1902, an IBAC list from 1972 revised the college’s hood lining arrangement to “red over white”. This was also problematic as it was a duplication of the hoods the Intercollegiate Bureau had assigned to Santa Clara University and North Carolina State University (both “cardinal above white”) as well as St. Martin’s University (“red over white”).

Here this duplication has been resolved by interchanging the colors in the lining of St. Mary’s hood and using a division per bar between them.