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 “wide chevron”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the wide chevron hood lining used a chevron with a width of 4½ inches, five inches, or six inches. The IBAC did not assign a wide chevron very often, as it tended to hide the color above the chevron when the hood was folded and worn, which gave the lining the appearance of being divided per chevron. Here this pattern has been substituted by a double or triple chevron whenever possible.

The hood lining of Trinity University was first described in a 1927 Intercollegiate Bureau list as being white with a maroon chevron, which was identical to the hood lining the Bureau had also assigned to Mississippi A&M College (today Mississippi State University). To avoid this duplication, in the late 1940s or 1950s the IBAC transposed the arrangement of Trinity’s hood colors and widened its chevron; a compilation of hood lining information by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and an Intercollegiate Bureau list from 1972 both described Trinity’s hood lining as maroon with a broad white chevron. According to the IBAC list, the chevron was seven inches wide, which was almost twice as wide as a standard chevron.

Here Trinity’s hood lining has been redesigned, using the original 1920s arrangement of colors, but with a triple chevron instead of the wide chevron from the late 1940s. This pattern – a white lining with three maroon chevrons – is a unique hood lining design the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume did not assign to any other college or university. The three chevrons suggest the name of the university and the design echoes the rays of the sun in the university’s seal.