Widener University
Pennsylvania
1821
Formerly “Pennsylvania Military College” and “PMC Colleges”
The school colors of Pennsylvania Military College were taken from the traditional colors of the three branches of the US military: scarlet (artillery), yellow (cavalry), and white (infantry). Today, Widener University’s colors are “deep blue” (dark blue) and gold, with light blue used as a tertiary color if needed.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): red/white/yellow (1917-1935)
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned Pennsylvania Military College a hood with three colors no later than 1927, according to a list of the Bureau’s hood lining patterns from that date. The college’s hood lining was cited as scarlet above lemon yellow with a reversed (inverted, or “point-up”) white chevron between them. The Intercollegiate Bureau inverted the chevron to avoid confusion with the hood lining it had already assigned to the Virginia Military Institute.
In Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970), Kevin Sheard erroneously described the chevron as being the standard (non-inverted, or “point-down”) type.