Saint Lawrence University
New York
1856
Also conferred degrees from the Brooklyn Law School until 1943.
St. Lawrence University students selected scarlet and brown as their school colors in 1876. “Scarlet and Brown” is also the name of one of the college songs, and a flag in the university archives that was made in the late 1870s or 1880s is scarlet with a brown border and “S.L.U.” letters appliquéd in the center. The shade of the university’s brown is dark.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): scarlet/brown (1895-1935)
According to the Semi-Centennial Anniversary of the Founding of St. Lawrence University, academic costume was already being worn in 1906, which suggests that the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) had assigned a hood lining to the university by that point. The academic hood lining design for St. Lawrence University was first cited in a 1918 Encyclopedia Americana article on academic costume written by Gardner Cotrell Leonard, the Director of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC). Leonard stated that the university had been assigned a hood lining that was bright red with a dark brown chevron, a description that does not change in subsequent IBAC lists. The IBAC often used “bright red” as a synonym for scarlet.