University of Rio Grande
Ohio
1876
Detailed historical information about the red and white school colors of the University of Rio Grande is not available at this time.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): red/white (1934-1935)
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 University of Rio Grande did not appear in early IBAC lists from 1927 or 1948, so the Bureau may not have assigned the college a hood lining until the late 1940s or 1950s. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Rio Grande’s hood lining as red with two white chevrons, which was also how it was described in an IBAC list from 1972. This was not a wise aesthetic choice, as it essentially duplicated the hood lining the IBAC had already assigned Cornell University (carnelian or cardinal with two white chevrons) in 1896. To avoid this problem, here Rio Grande has been reassigned a hood lined red with two white horizontal bars.