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. 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 Intercollegiate Bureau intended to describe.

To avoid duplicating the hood linings already assigned to the University of Florida (orange with a navy blue chevron) or the University of Virginia (navy blue with an orange chevron), the IBAC assigned a “navy blue above orange” hood lining to Kent State Normal College between 1915 (when Kent State began conferring four-year degrees) and 1927. An identical description can be found in a 1948 IBAC list. But in the late 1940s or 1950s the Bureau updated Kent State’s hood lining assignment. A 1969 IBAC list described the university’s hood lining as orange with a navy blue chevron, and then a few years later a 1972 IBAC list changed this description to gold with an “electric blue” chevron – a fairly accurate description of the official gold and royal blue colors of Kent State since 1925.

Here the Intercollegiate Bureau’s original orange and navy blue hood lining assignment for Kent State Normal College has been restored.