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 one above the other in the hood lining, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron. Later the IBAC began to use a per reversed chevron division and a division per bar on rare occasions. 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 IBAC intended to describe.

The IBAC assigned Rockford College a hood lined “purple above white”, according to Intercollegiate Bureau lists from 1927, 1948, and 1972. The heraldic division between the colors was not defined, but since Columbia College in South Carolina had already been assigned a hood lined purple above white, divided per chevron, the Bureau probably intended Rockford’s colors to be divided per reversed chevron.

The college did not use this pattern, however. A commencement photo of the class of 1935 clearly shows the graduates wearing hoods lined purple with a white chevron, and lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) described Rockford’s hood lining as purple with a white chevron. Unfortunately this was a duplication of the hood lining the Intercollegiate Bureau had first assigned to Amherst College in 1895 or 1896.

To avoid this problem, Rockford’s official hood lining assignment from the Intercollegiate Bureau has been restored here.