To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. One of the heraldic divisions the Bureau employed was a “reversed chevron”. Here the standard chevron of between three and four inches in width was inverted so that the chevron pointed upwards.

Aquinas College did not appear in early IBAC lists from 1927 or 1948, so the IBAC may not have assigned the college a hood lining until the late 1940s or 1950s. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as maroon with a reversed silver gray chevron, which was also how it was described in an Intercollegiate Bureau list from 1972. “Silver gray” is how the IBAC described a satin lining fabric in a light shade of gray, which was used for institutions having either light gray or silver as a school color.

Aquinas had been assigned a reversed chevron to avoid duplicating the hood lining the Bureau had assigned to Gale College (maroon with a silver gray chevron). When it assigned Aquinas this hood lining, the Intercollegiate Bureau must have been unaware that Gale had gone defunct in 1939.