Rice University
Texas
1912
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described Rice Institute as having a hood lined either silver gray above Yale blue (dark blue) or silver above blue. This described a hood lining with a light gray upper half above a dark blue lower half, with the two colors probably divided in a chevron shape. Strangely, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Rice’s hood lining as blue with a gray chevron, and a 1969 IBAC list stated that the lining was Yale blue with a silver gray chevron. The discrepancy between two nearly contemporaneous IBAC lists (1969 and 1972) is hard to explain. But because the school seal incorporates a blue shield with two reversed silver, white, or gray chevrons (assuming the hatching on the shield indicates heraldic tinctures), here Rice has been reassigned a hood lined dark blue with two reversed medium gray chevrons.
When Rice Institute was founded in 1912, blue and gray were chosen as the institute’s colors to symbolize the northern origins of the institute’s founder William Marsh Rice (who was born in Massachusetts) and the location of the school in the South. The shade of blue is dark, like the color of the Federal military uniforms during the War Between the States. The World Almanac described this blue as “Oxford blue”, a very dark shade of navy blue. Confederate military uniforms were a variety of gray and butternut hues, but a medium gray was generally understood as being a “typical” representation of the shade. Rice traditionally used this shade of medium gray along with a lighter shade of gray for greater contrast with the institute’s dark blue.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/gray (1916-1931); Oxford blue/Confederate gray (1934-1935)
