College colors for West Virginia University were appended to the copy of the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume the Intercollegiate Commission sent to the 1896 Living Church Quarterly, published in December 1895. This suggests that the university was a pre-Code client of the Cotrell & Leonard academic costume firm, which was the depository for the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC). But West Virginia was not cited in any other Cotrell & Leonard or IBAC source until a 1918 Encyclopedia Americana article on academic costume, written by Gardner Cotrell Leonard, the Director of the IBAC. Leonard stated that the university had been assigned a hood lining that was “old gold above dark blue, parti-per-chevron”. If the World Almanac descriptions of the university’s colors are trustworthy, they would suggest a possible IBAC assignment c.1896-1899, but this is by no means certain.

The Bureau employed a per chevron division of the two colors to avoid duplicating hood linings they had already assigned to Allegheny College (navy blue with an old gold chevron) and the US Naval Academy (old gold with a navy blue chevron).

West Virginia’s original IBAC hood lining description did not change until a 1969 IBAC list, which described the university’s hood lining as navy blue with an old gold chevron. This must be an erroneous citation, as it duplicated or resembled other hoods the Bureau had assigned by that point. Here the original Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume assignment has been retained.

The Bureau assigned another West Virginia school nearly the same hood lining pattern. Shepherd University uses a hood lined gold above marine blue, divided per chevron.