Scripps College
California
1926
Dr. Hartley Alexander, a philosophy professor at Scripps College, selected green and silver as the school’s colors in 1926. They were intended to represent the gray-green color of the chaparral bush growing in the mountains near the campus, which are topped by silver snow in the winter. Vintage collegiate memorabilia from Scripps display a range of light green hues, from a “Kelly green” (bright green) to “sage green” (light grayish-green).
Citations in the World Almanac: green/silver (1934-1935)
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927 and 1948 did not include a description of the hood lining assigned to Scripps College, and it is very likely that the college designed its own hood lining pattern without consulting the IBAC. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as sage green with a “deep V-shaped stripe” of silver. An identical description appeared in an IBAC list from 1969, but a 1972 IBAC list revised the sage green shade of the hood lining to a plain green, and changed the deep V-shaped stripe to a plain chevron.
To date no example of a vintage Scripps hood with a deep V-shaped stripe has been found, so the citation in Sheard (1962) may have been an inaccurate description of a plain chevron that was erroneously transcribed into an IBAC list (1969) and later corrected (1972).