Susquehanna University
Pennsylvania
1858
On 16 May 1895 the Intercollegiate Commission on Academic Costume approved a uniform system of caps, gowns, and hoods for American colleges and universities called the “Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume”. The commissioners intended for every college and university to use a unique arrangement of their colors in the hood lining which would enable an observer to “read” the hood and thereby identify the alma mater of the hood’s owner. But as an article in the 27 July 1902 edition of an Albany, NY newspaper named The Argus recalled, “the combining of two or three colors in a lining was a great problem with the commission but was solved by [Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume Director Gardner Cotrell Leonard] after some study in heraldry by the chevron, double and triple chevron, and parti-per-chevron.” These heraldic divisions of the school colors became the means by which a variety of distinctive hood lining patterns could be individually assigned to each school that chose to follow the Intercollegiate Code.
Susquehanna University students voted to adopt orange and maroon as their school colors in 1896. The university’s Board of Regents officially approved this decision in 1903.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/maroon (1914-1935)
The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division Leonard’s Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood, but beginning in 1895 the “double chevron” was also used quite frequently. 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 approximately two inches apart so that the color of the hood lining showed between them. Probably around 1903 the IBAC assigned Susquehanna University a hood lining that was maroon with two orange chevrons; the IBAC used two chevrons for Susquehanna because Rush Medical College had already been assigned a hood lined maroon with an orange chevron in 1896. A description of Susquehanna’s hood lining first appeared in an Intercollegiate Bureau list from 1927, and this description did not change in subsequent IBAC lists.