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 IBAC director Gardner Cotrell Leonard also used other heraldic devices to avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors. One of the other heraldic divisions Leonard used on rare occasions was what he called “[color] and [color]”, most likely referring to a “parti per pale” division whereby the two colors were divided vertically in the lining of the hood with the description being understood as “[left side] and [right side]” of the hood lining.

For example, the IBAC assigned San Jose State College a hood lined “gold and white” at some point between 1927 and 1948. This probably referred to a hood lining that was vertically divided gold on the left and white on the right. San Jose must have disliked this pattern; Kevin Sheard stated that the college was using a hood lined “golden yellow” with a white chevron in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970). In a 1972 list the Intercollegiate Bureau cited a similar pattern of “gold” with a white chevron. Unfortunately this was a duplication of the hood lining the Bureau had already assigned to Mills College, which is also in California.

Because San Jose State University is the flagship institution of the California State University system, the original heraldic pattern the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume used for San Jose’s hood lining has been adopted for the California State University system, but in the system colors of red and white.