University of Connecticut
Connecticut
1881
Formerly “Storrs Agricultural College” and “Connecticut Agricultural College”
Opinions vary about the exact circumstances, but the students and faculty adopted blue and white as the colors of Storrs Agricultural College at some point between 1893 and 1897. According to one student, the colors were symbolic of the beautiful blue sky and white clouds of Connecticut, but the shade of blue most often used for collegiate memorabilia was a dark blue, and by the 1930s the shade of the university’s blue was being described as “imperial blue” (royal blue, which was a dark blue).
The Board of Trustees had never officially approved blue and white, so in 1952 President Albert N. Jorgensen appointed a committee of five faculty members to determine the official colors for the University of Connecticut. The committee recommended a shade of blue called “national flag blue”, and in November 1952 the Board of Trustees officially adopted blue and white as the colors of the university, with national flag blue being the shade of the school’s blue. This is a dark blue, identical to the blue in the canton of the flag of the United States.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/white (1914); dark blue/white (1915); blue/white (1916-1935)
The first Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) record of a hood lining for the University of Connecticut can be found in a 1927 list. In this list the IBAC described the university’s hood as Yale blue with two white chevrons. Unfortunately, the Bureau also assigned Villanova University and Washington and Lee University an identical hood lining pattern.
The Intercollegiate Bureau employed the term “Yale blue” to describe a dark shade of blue which is consistent with the dark blue shade of blue Connecticut was using at the time. Two white chevrons were used to avoid confusion with the hood lining that had been assigned to Pennsylvania State University between 1905 and 1912 (navy blue with a white chevron), but by 1969 this had been forgotten and an IBAC list described Connecticut’s hood as navy blue with a single white chevron – a duplication of Pennsylvania State’s hood.
Here the original Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume hood lining for the University of Connecticut has been restored.