To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. Possibly by 1918 (and certainly by 1927), one of the uncommon heraldic patterns the IBAC used was “two reversed chevrons”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the two reversed-chevron pattern used two chevrons of about 1½ inches in width placed approximately two inches apart so that the color of the hood lining showed between them, and the two chevrons were inverted so that the chevrons pointed upwards.

A 1927 IBAC list described a single school (Washington & Lee University) as having been assigned two reversed chevrons, but this pattern may have been more common than that. Since Mercer University was cited as having two chevrons in this mid 1920s list but as having two reversed chevrons in a 1969 IBAC list, it is entirely possible that the earlier-published Intercollegiate Bureau lists, for reasons of space, did not carefully indicate whether a “two chevron” citation described a standard or reversed orientation, or that some schools originally assigned a double chevron later had their chevrons inverted to avoid duplication with another school with the same or similar hood lining pattern.

The IBAC assigned Northern Michigan University a hood lining that was olive green with two old gold reversed chevrons in the late 1940s or 1950s, but this information does not appear in an Intercollegiate Bureau list until 1972. However, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the university’s hood lining as olive green with two gold (not old gold) reversed chevrons. The Bureau used “olive green” to describe a dark shade of this color, which is consistent with the olive Northern Michigan used during the first half of the 20^th century.