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 “parti per chevron” was also used quite frequently. Here the two school colors were placed in the hood lining one above the other, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron. Later the IBAC began to use a per reversed chevron division and a division per bar on rare occasions. Confusingly, in IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hoods were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]” which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar, and today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the IBAC intended to describe.

The IBAC assigned Tusculum College a hood lined “black above orange” no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. Similar descriptions of the college’s hood lining were included in IBAC lists from 1948 and 1972. However, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard for Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) described Tusculum’s hood lining as being a single color of orange, which must be erroneous because this would have been a duplication of the hood assigned to Syracuse University in 1901 or 1902.

The official pre-1927 Intercollegiate Bureau hood lining assignment does not describe how the black and orange colors in Tusculum’s hood were divided, but since Lewis & Clark College is known to have been assigned black above orange, divided per chevron, here Tusculum has been assigned a division per reversed chevron to avoid a repetition of Lewis & Clark’s hood lining.