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 “parti per chevron” was also used quite frequently. Here the two school colors were placed in the hood lining one above the other, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron. Confusingly, in IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hoods were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]” which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar, and today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Intercollegiate Bureau intended to describe.

The Bureau assigned Muhlenberg College a hood lined “cardinal above steel gray” no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. “Steel gray” is how the Intercollegiate Bureau described a satin lining fabric in a medium shade of gray, which was used for institutions having either medium gray or steel as a school color. A 1948 IBAC list redefined the college hood lining’s lower color as “gray”, which still indicated a shade of medium gray. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Muhlenberg’s hood lining as cardinal with a gray chevron (not per chevron), which was also how it was described in an IBAC list from 1972. This was an unfortunate revision, as it made Muhlenberg’s hood lining too similar in appearance to the hood lining the Intercollegiate Bureau had first assigned Virginia Union University (scarlet with a steel gray chevron) – which was why the Bureau had assigned Muhlenberg a per chevron division of its cardinal and steel gray colors in the first place.