Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College
Indiana
1840
Because they are colors traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary, cerulean blue and white have been used at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods since the college was founded in 1840. “Cerulean blue” is a variable shade of azure blue often associated with the color of the sky. St. Mary-of-the-Woods College defines it as a light blue.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/white (1923-1935)
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. One of the heraldic divisions the Bureau employed was a “reversed chevron”. Here the standard chevron of between three and four inches in width was inverted so that the chevron pointed upwards.
Columbia University had been assigned a light blue hood lining with a white chevron in 1895 or 1896 , so the IBAC assigned Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College a hood lining that was light blue with a white “reversed chevron” no later than 1927, according to an Intercollegiate Bureau list from that period, and in every IBAC list thereafter. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) inaccurately described the college’s hood lining as medium blue with a standard chevron.
