Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927, 1948, 1969, and 1972 described the Medical College of South Carolina as having a hood lined gold with a black chevron, a design confirmed by information compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970).

While the unanimous evidence demonstrates beyond a doubt that the Intercollegiate Bureau assigned the Medical College of South Carolina a hood of this pattern and with these colors, the IBAC was guilty of obscuring the fact that it had surreptitiously assigned two institutions hood linings that were different on paper but indistinguishable in practice. The Bureau probably assigned Vanderbilt University a hood lined gold with a black chevron around 1896, but by 1927 was describing it as “lemon yellow” with a black chevron. Because metallic fabrics were not used, “gold” school colors were often signified by yellow fabric (and sometimes light orange fabric), as with Vanderbilt, whose colors were gold and black. The IBAC later dropped this pretense and began citing Vanderbilt and the Medical College of South Carolina as having hood linings that were gold with a black chevron, as in an IBAC list found in an appendix of Scholars on Parade (1969) by David Lockmiller.

Resolving this duplication problem is not easy, as both schools were officially assigned the same hood lining pattern. But since Vanderbilt was probably the first to be assigned (c.1896), and since a single black chevron fortuitously creates a visual “V” (for Vanderbilt) in the university’s hood lining, Vanderbilt has kept the design. The gold hood lining for the Medical University of South Carolina, therefore, has been given a second black chevron to avoid any chance of confusion with the hood lining of Vanderbilt.