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. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns 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. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

St. Martin’s College did not appear in early Intercollegiate Bureau lists from 1927 or 1948, so the IBAC probably did not assign the college a hood lining until the late 1940s or 1950s. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described St. Martin’s hood lining as red above white with the colors divided per chevron. The first IBAC list to describe the college’s hood lining was not until 1972, where it was said to be “red over white”. None of these hood lining descriptions specifically define the shade of red as “cardinal”, which was probably the way the Intercollegiate Bureau diverted attention from the obvious similarity between the hood lining of St. Martin’s and the hood linings that by 1927 at the latest the Bureau had already assigned to Santa Clara University and North Carolina State (both “cardinal above white”). Here this duplication has been resolved by transposing the colors in the lining of St. Martin’s hood and using a division per reversed chevron between them.