Hope College
Michigan
1866
Hope College was founded by members of the Dutch Reformed Church, so students selected orange and blue as their college colors not long after the college was founded because orange and blue were the colors of the House of Orange-Nassau, rulers of the Netherlands. The shade of blue used by Hope College is a navy blue.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/navy blue (1914-1916), orange/blue (1917-1935)
To avoid duplicating the hood linings already assigned to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (orange with a navy blue chevron) or the University of Virginia (navy blue with an orange chevron), by 1927 the IBAC had assigned an “orange above dark blue” or “orange above navy blue” hood lining to three colleges: Cedarville College, Hope College, and Morgan College.
IBAC lists from 1927, 1948, and 1972 described the hood lining of Hope College as “orange above navy blue” without indicating the way the two colors were divided. But a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) said the college’s hood lining was orange and blue (not dark blue), divided per chevron.