University of Tulsa

Oklahoma

1894

Formerly “Henry Kendall College”

official hood lining pattern
A collection of Henry Kendall College memorabilia (c.1915-1917) from the University of Tulsa archives. The college's black and gold colors have been interpreted as either black and orange (on the pennant and banner) or black and yellow (on the Freshman beanie cap).

Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/black (1923-1931); black/gold (1934-1935)

According to 1927 and 1948 lists from the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), the Bureau initially approved a hood lining for Henry Kendall College that was black with an orange (not gold) chevron. But in the late 1940s or 1950s, over a decade after the University of Tulsa had adopted new school colors, the IBAC revised the university’s hood lining pattern. The exact pattern the Bureau selected, however, is not clear from existing documents.

Lists of hood linings compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) described Tulsa’s hood lining as old gold with a bi-chevron (a single chevron divided into two colors) of crimson above royal blue.

The lining pattern of a University of Tulsa hood spotted in the early 2000s. It does not follow any of the recorded patterns that were assigned to the institution, and may have been a custom-made interpretation of the official Intercollegiate Bureau pattern described in 1972.
crimson
royal blue
old gold

Students at Henry Kendall College chose gold and black as their school colors in 1894. But students had difficulty decorating campus events with those colors, and this along with dissatisfaction with the appearance of the college’s academic hood let to efforts to change the school’s colors after Henry Kendall College became the University of Tulsa in 1920. By the mid-1930s opposition to gold and black was so strong that the administration asked the university’s fine arts professors to propose new colors for the university. They suggested three college colors: crimson, royal blue, and old gold. In 1936 the administration adopted these as the official colors of the University of Tulsa.

An illustration of a Master of Science hood from the University of Tulsa in Kevin Sheard's Academic Heraldry in America (1962). The upper half of the bi-chevron has not been rendered in the correct crimson color.

But an Intercollegiate Bureau list from 1972 described the university’s hood as “gold over blue” with two red chevrons. In the Bureau’s description, it is not clear where the division between the gold and blue was intended to be placed — above the chevrons or below?

By the early 2000s there were at least two variations of Tulsa University hoods in use: some were old gold with two differently-colored chevrons (a royal blue upper chevron and a crimson lower chevron) whereas other hoods were old gold above royal blue with a single crimson chevron in between.

These inconsistencies should be resolved, so in order to do that, here the University of Tulsa has been reassigned a hood lining that is a heraldically-improved variation of the early design described by Kevin Sheard in 1962. To follow the Rule of Tincture, the crimson and royal blue chevrons should be separated so that the old gold hood lining shows between them.