Michigan State University
Michigan
1855
Formerly “Michigan Agricultural College”
The Athletic Association of Michigan Agricultural College used green as the school color from 1899 until the mid-1910s, when white was added as a secondary color. Vintage tobacco cards, pennants, and other souvenirs demonstrate that the college’s green was more precisely a light olive, grass green, or wheat green shade, which was appropriate for an agricultural college. By the 1930s the shade had darkened to a hunter green color.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): green (1896); olive green (1897-1903); green (1904-1905); olive green (1906-1908); green (1909-1910); olive green (1911); green (1912-1913); green/white (1914-1933); hunters green/white (1934-1935)
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927 and 1948 described Michigan State University as having a hood lined with a single color of “greenish yellow” (a light olive green).
The IBAC must have darkened the green and added a white chevron to the university’s hood lining in the 1950s because a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Michigan State’s hood lining as hunter green with a white chevron. Similarly, a 1969 Intercollegiate Bureau list says that the university’s hood lining was dark green with a white chevron. The Bureau apparently changed its mind, because a 1972 IBAC list lightened the color of the hood lining back to the university’s original greenish yellow but retained the white chevron.
Here the original Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume assignment has been restored.
