University of Massachusetts system
Each institution in the system uses different athletic colors but the same academic hood lining pattern from the original University of Massachusetts:
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Massachusetts
1863
Formerly “Massachusetts Agricultural College” and “Massachusetts State College”
Students at the Massachusetts Agricultural College adopted maroon and white as their school colors around 1871.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): maroon/white (1900-1935)
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 quite frequently employed was a “double chevron”. 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.
The Bureau assigned Massachusetts Agricultural College a hood lining that was maroon with two white chevrons no later than 1927, according to an Intercollegiate Bureau list from that period. This description was unchanged in subsequent IBAC lists. However, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as maroon with a white chevron, which must be erroneous because this was a duplication of the hood lining the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume had already assigned to Lafayette College in 1896.
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst adopted a “custom” doctoral gown at an unknown date. The gown is maroon with black velvet facings and sleeve bars edged with white piping. A “standard” doctoral hood with black exterior fabric is worn with this gown. A Doctor of Education hood and gown of this type from the University Cap & Gown Company (Balfour) is illustrated below. Strangely, the company describes the color of the gown as “burgundy”, not maroon.
