On 16 May 1895 the Intercollegiate Commission on Academic Costume approved a uniform system of caps, gowns, and hoods for American colleges and universities called the “Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume”. The members of the commission intended for every college and university to use a unique arrangement of their colors in their hood lining, which would enable an observer to “read” the hood and thereby identify the alma mater of the hood’s owner. The commissioners were initially stymied by the fact that many colleges and universities use the same school colors, until Gardner Cotrell Leonard, the director of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) and an advisor to the Commission, suggested that various heraldic divisions of the colors might be employed to create distinctive hood lining patterns that could be individually assigned to each school that chose to follow the Intercollegiate Code.

The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division the IBAC employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood, but Leonard also used other heraldic devices to avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors. Beginning in 1895, one of the other heraldic divisions the IBAC used was what they 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, Midland College was assigned a hood lining with a per pale division of its colors no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period that described the college’s hood as “orange left side, black right side”. However, a 1948 IBAC list described Midland’s hood more generally as “orange and black”.