University of Northern Colorado
Colorado
1889
Formerly “Colorado State Teacher’s College” and “Colorado State College of Education”
Not long after Colorado State Normal School was founded in 1889, students chose lavender and yellow as their college colors because they are the colors of the state flower, the columbine. The yellow had an orange tint which made it a golden yellow hue. Purple and gold began to be more commonly used in the 1910s as being more appropriate for the school’s athletic uniforms, and college administrators made this decision official in the 1920s. In the mid-1960s the University of Northern Colorado football team began wearing athletic uniforms in dark blue and gold, so in 1976 the administration made navy blue and gold the university’s athletic colors while retaining purple and gold as the university’s academic colors.
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) probably assigned Colorado State Teachers College a hood in the late 1890s or early 1900s when lavender and yellow were the school’s colors. Depending upon the shade of yellow a school sent as a sample, the Bureau might define it as “yellow” or “lemon yellow” (if the yellow sample was a bright yellow color), or the Bureau might define it as “gold” or “golden yellow” (if the yellow sample had a slightly orange tint).
Because Colorado State Teachers College originally used a golden yellow color with its lavender, academic hood lists published by the IBAC in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described the college as having a gold colored hood lining with a lavender chevron.
Reflecting the darker shade of violet the school had been using since the 1910s, a 1969 Intercollegiate Bureau citation said the chevron was purple. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as old gold (an orange- or brown-tinted gold) with a purple chevron.
Here the original (golden) yellow and lavender hood lining of Colorado State Teachers College has been restored.