The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned Jamestown College a hood lining that was orange with two black chevrons at some point between the late 1920s and the early 1940s, as a record of this design does not appear until an IBAC list from 1948. An identical description appeared in a 1972 IBAC list. But a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as orange with a black chevron, which must be erroneous because this was a duplication of the hood the IBAC assigned Princeton University in 1895 (which is no doubt why the IBAC originally assigned Jamestown a hood lined orange with two black chevrons).

Unfortunately, by the late 1940s the IBAC was describing the hood linings of three colleges – Hendrix, Mercer, and Jamestown – as orange with two black chevrons. The Bureau’s description of Hendrix’s hood pattern was inaccurate because that college used a slightly “burnt orange” lining with two black chevrons, while Mercer and Jamestown used linings that were “true” shades of orange. This means one of these institutions must have used two standard black chevrons and the other must have used two inverted black chevrons. Because a 1969 IBAC list stated that Mercer was using inverted (reversed) chevrons, by process of elimination Jamestown must have been assigned two standard chevrons. Each of Jamestown’s black chevrons were about 1½ inches in width and were placed approximately two inches apart so that the orange color of the hood lining showed between them.