Shorter University
Georgia
1873
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/white (1914-1918); white/gold (1923-1935)
The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood, but beginning in 1895 the “double chevron” was also used quite frequently. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the double chevron pattern used two chevrons of about 1½ inches in width placed two inches apart so that the color of the hood lining showed between them.
Probably in the 1910s or early 1920s the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume assigned Shorter College a hood lining that was gold with two white chevrons, according to IBAC lists from 1927, 1948, and 1972. Unfortunately, the IBAC had overlooked the fact that this was already the hood lining it had assigned to the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York around 1902.
Lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) erroneously described the college’s hood lining as gold with a white chevron, which was the hood lining the IBAC had already assigned Mills College between 1895 and 1902 – which is no doubt why the Bureau had added a second white chevron to the College of Mount Saint Vincent’s gold lining.
The Shorter College alma mater song, The White and Gold, was written in 1913, so these colors were established by that date at the latest, but it is not known when and how they were chosen. Today the college colors are gold, white, and “Columbia blue”, a light blue. Again, it is not known when Columbia blue was added.
To resolve the hood lining duplication problem between Mount Saint Vincent and Shorter, the space between Shorter’s two white chevrons has been filled with the college’s third school color, Columbia blue, to form tri-chevron of white, light blue, and white.