Kalamazoo College
Michigan
1833
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/black (1917-1935)
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 “triple chevron” was also used occasionally. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the triple chevron pattern used three chevrons of about 1½ inches in width placed approximately two inches apart so that the color of the hood lining showed between them.
The IBAC assigned Kalamazoo College a hood lining that was burnt orange with three black chevrons no later than 1927, according to an Intercollegiate Bureau list from that period. Identical descriptions of the college’s hood lining appeared in 1948 and 1972 IBAC lists. Similarly, information compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Kalamazoo’s hood lining as orange (not burnt orange) with three black chevrons. One should note that the traditional orange color of the college was neither a burnt orange nor a “true” orange, but was a shade of dark orange in between the two. This shade fell within what the Intercollegiate Bureau generally called “burnt orange”.
Students at Kalamazoo College were using orange and black colors at athletic events as early as 1902, but they were officially adopted in 1905 upon the recommendation of a faculty member who had graduated from Princeton named Clarke Benedict Williams, who was dean of Kalamazoo at that time. Williams and his wife were later killed in the 1923 Yokohama earthquake in Japan. Vintage collegiate memorabilia from Kalamazoo display a shade of orange that was darker than Princeton orange.
