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 a college or university’s hood, but by 1918 the head of the Bureau, Gardner Cotrell Leonard, was also using what he called a “wide chevron”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between four and five inches, but the wide chevron had a width of 5½ inches, six inches, or seven inches. The IBAC did not assign a wide chevron very often, as it tended to hide the color above the chevron when the hood was folded and worn, which gave the colors in the lining the appearance of being divided per chevron. Because of this problem, here this pattern has been substituted by a double or triple chevron whenever possible.

The University of West Georgia does not appear in early IBAC lists from 1927 or 1948, nor in Kevin Sheard’s compilation of hood lining information in Academic Heraldry in America (1962), so the IBAC does not appear to have assigned the university a hood lining until the mid 1960s. An IBAC list from 1972 described West Georgia’s hood lining as blue with a 7-inch red chevron, which was also how the university’s hood lining had been described in Sheard’s updated hood lining list in Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970). The IBAC must have assigned West Georgia a wide chevron to avoid confusion with the hood lining the IBAC had already assigned to Arkansas College (today Lyon College; blue with a red chevron). To avoid the problems associated with the wide chevron pattern, here West Georgia has been reassigned two chevrons.