An academic hood list published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1948 described the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine as having a hood lined scarlet with an azure blue chevron. It is not known whether this was a hood lining pattern that had been officially assigned by the IBAC in the late 1920s or 1930s, or merely a record of the college’s school colors applied to a hypothetical hood lining arrangement, but either way it was a unique design not used by any other college or university at the time.

The IBAC may have simplified Kirksville’s hood lining arrangement in the late 1940s or 1950s because a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as using a single color of bright red – a description also repeated in a 1972 IBAC list as “scarlet”. Because this was a duplication of the hood lining the IBAC had already assigned to Rutgers University in 1901 or 1902, here Kirksville’s original IBAC lining assignment from the late 1920s or 1930s has been retained.