Pomona College
California
1887
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 a college or university’s hood, but by 1918 Bureau president Gardner Cotrell Leonard was also using what he called a “wide chevron”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the wide chevron hood lining used a chevron with a width of 4½ inches, five inches, six inches, or more. The IBAC did not assign the wide chevron pattern very often, as it tended to hide the color above the chevron when the hood was folded and worn, which gave the lining the appearance of having colors divided per chevron.
To avoid duplicating the hood linings already assigned to Pennsylvania State University (navy blue with a white chevron) and Middlebury College (Yale blue with a white chevron), the Intercollegiate Bureau assigned Pomona College a hood lining that was navy blue with a white “wide chevron”, according to IBAC lists from 1927, 1948, and 1972. However, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) erroneously described the college’s hood lining as “light navy blue” (medium blue?) with a standard-width white chevron.
To avoid the problems with the Bureau’s “wide chevron” design discussed above, here Pomona’s wide white chevron has been changed to a standard width white chevron charged with a gold chevron – in other words, a tri-chevron of white, gold, and white. The college’s original dark blue color has been retained for the hood lining.
Initially, the school colors of Pomona College were green and gold, but in 1893 students voted to change them to blue and white. The shade of blue was dark, like a navy blue. More recent historical information about Pomona’s colors is lacking, but at some point in the 1970s or 1980s the college’s colors were changed once again, to dark blue and gold. Pomona’s current definitions of its blue are inconsistent. Historically it was dark blue, but today most of the college’s memorabilia (which follow specifications in the college’s graphic standards manual) use a medium shade of blue. The college’s athletic website, however, says that Pomona’s colors are Yale blue (a dark shade of blue), orange (not gold), and white.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/white (1914); navy blue/white (1915-1917); blue/white (1918-1935)
