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 quite frequently employed was a “double chevron”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the double chevron pattern used two chevrons of about 1½ inches in width placed two inches apart so that the color of the hood lining showed between them.

Seattle Pacific University does not appear in early IBAC lists from 1927 or 1948, so the Bureau probably did not assign the university a hood lining until the late 1940s or 1950s. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Seattle Pacific’s hood lining as maroon with two white chevrons, which was also how it was described in an Intercollegiate Bureau list from 1972. This arrangement duplicated the hood lining the IBAC had already assigned to the University of Massachusetts no later than 1927. So here the colors of Seattle Pacific’s hood lining have been transposed and the two chevrons have been inverted to create a new and unique hood lining pattern for Seattle Pacific University the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume did not assign to any other college or university.