Alma College
Michigan
1886
Students at Alma College selected maroon and cream as the school colors during the first year of the college (1886-1887).
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): cream/maroon (1902-1904); maroon/cream (1917-1935)
It is not known when the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned Alma College a hood lining, but a 1927 IBAC list described Alma’s hood lining as maroon with a “cream white” chevron.
Alma was apparently the first college or university to be assigned this color arrangement, but perhaps to avoid confusion with the hood lining assigned to Bradley Polytechnic Institute (maroon with an “ivory white” chevron) the IBAC inverted the chevron in Alma’s hood in the late 1940s or 1950s.
This reassignment using a hood lining with a “reversed chevron” was unnecessary because by this point Bradley had changed its colors to red and white, so here Alma College’s original IBAC hood lining has been retained.