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. One of the heraldic divisions the Bureau employed was “two reversed chevrons”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the reversed double 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. The two chevrons were inverted so that the chevrons pointed upwards.

A 1927 IBAC list described only 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 that same 1927 list but “two reversed chevrons” in a 1969 IBAC list, it is entirely possible that the earlier 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 Bureau had assigned Olivet College a hood lined white with a “Harvard crimson” chevron by the mid 1920s, according to an IBAC list from 1927. In Academic Heraldry in America (1962), Kevin Sheard described the college’s crimson chevron as “bright red”, but otherwise the original Intercollegiate Bureau description remained essentially unchanged until 1972, when an IBAC list stated that Olivet’s hood lining had been revised to white with two crimson chevrons.