The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood, but beginning in 1895 the “parti per chevron” was also quite frequently used. Here the two school colors were placed in the hood lining one above the other, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron. Confusingly, in IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hoods were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]” which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar, and today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the IBAC intended to describe.

Probably in the early to mid 1910s the Intercollegiate Bureau assigned the University of Louisville a “black above cardinal” hood lining, as this description can be found in a 1927 IBAC list. The Bureau had assigned the university a hood lining divided per chevron to avoid duplicating the hood already assigned to Ohio Wesleyan University (black with a cardinal chevron). According to a 1969 list from the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume, the black and cardinal were divided per chevron.

Hood lining information compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Louisville’s hood lining as having a single color of cardinal, but this information is erroneous. It would have duplicated the hood lining assigned to the University of Wisconsin in 1895 or 1896.