Vincennes University
Indiana
1801
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/gold (1917-1918)
Vincennes University appeared in a list of college colors the authors of the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume sent to the Living Church Quarterly, which published this information in December 1895 (for the Quarterly‘s 1896 edition). This was apparently the first attempt by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) to create a list of academic hood lining colors for colleges and universities in the United States. Here Vincennes was cited as having a hood lined with white and navy blue, but the heraldic pattern used to separate the two colors was not described.
Vincennes must have changed its school colors between 1894 and 1912, because a c.1912 IBAC list said the university’s hood lining was blue with a gold chevron, a citation that did not change in subsequent Intercollegiate Bureau materials. “Blue” was one of the ways the Bureau described a medium blue or “true blue” shade, which is consistent with the blue color Vincennes was primarily using in the early 20th century and how the Bureau avoided duplicating the hood assigned to Simmons College in Massachusetts.
Detailed historical information about the blue and gold school colors of Vincennes University is not available at this time, but in the late 19th century the colors were blue and white. It is not known when white was changed to gold, nor why. Regardless of whether the secondary color was white or gold, the blue used by the university varied from a medium blue shade to a dark blue shade — an aesthetic variation that seems to have continued to the present day.
