Bethany College
Kansas
1881
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.
The IBAC somewhat inaccurately described the colors of the hood they assigned Bethany College as blue and gold, and to avoid duplicating the hood linings already assigned to Emory & Henry College (dark blue with a lemon yellow chevron) and Simmons College (dark blue with a gold chevron), the Intercollegiate Bureau assigned Bethany College a heraldic pattern with two chevrons. IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948 described Bethany’s hood as blue with two gold chevrons.
Dr. Carl Aaron Swensson, a Lutheran pastor who founded Bethany College in 1881 and became its first president, wanted the colors of the college to match the colors of the flag of Sweden, which at that time (1881) were dark blue and yellow (or gold). So he chose “royal blue” and “lemon yellow” as the official school colors of Bethany College. Bethany’s “lemon yellow” indicated a bright shade of vibrant golden yellow and “royal blue” indicated a dark shade of purplish-blue.
The dark blue originally used in the Swedish flag would be lightened to the current “true” blue shade in 1906.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/yellow (1895-1903); yellow/blue (1904-1922); blue/yellow (1923-1935)
For reasons that are unknown, in the late 1940s or 1950s the Bureau redesigned the college’s hood. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Bethany’s hood lining as lemon above royal blue, divided per chevron, and an IBAC list from 1972 described it as “lemon over blue” without specifying the heraldic division of the two colors. Because Bethany’s original hood lining pattern was unique and did not duplicate the hood lining of any other school, the IBAC’s redesign was unnecessary.
Here the original IBAC pattern using two chevrons has been retained, but with the college’s correct colors.