The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division Gardner Cotrell Leonard’s Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood, but beginning in 1895 some schools were assigned hood linings with two colors placed one above the other, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron, a reversed chevron, or a horizontal bar. Confusingly, in IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of these hoods 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, and today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

Since the University of Minnesota had already been assigned a hood lined old gold with a maroon chevron in 1897 or 1897, the Intercollegiate Bureau assigned Eureka College an “old gold above maroon” hood lining no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. Eureka was apparently the first college to be assigned this pattern – which would suggest the division of the two colors was a per chevron pattern – probably to avoid duplicating the hood lining already assigned to Boston College (originally maroon with an old gold chevron) or Atlantic Medical College (gold with a dark red chevron). By 1948 many of the college and university hood linings the IBAC had described as “old gold” were redefined as “gold”, and Eureka’s lining was no exception, appearing in IBAC lists in both 1948 and 1972 as “gold over maroon”. Here the original IBAC assignment (with Eureka’s correct school colors) has been retained.