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. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]”, which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

Lists from the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume in 1927, 1948, and 1972 all described Westminster Theological Seminary’s hood lining as purple above white without defining how the two colors were divided. Since the hood linings of Columbia College (South Carolina) and Rockford College (Illinois) were both described the same way, and had probably been assigned hood linings at an earlier time, it is likely that Westminster’s hood lining colors were divided per bar.

Normally, information compiled by independent researcher Kevin Sheard in the 1960s is helpful in describing the heraldic division of the colors in hood linings of this pattern, but in Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) Sheard said that Westminster’s hood lining was purple with a white chevron. Either Sheard was mistaken or Westminster was using the wrong hood lining pattern, because this would have been a duplication of the hood the Intercollegiate Bureau first assigned to Amherst College in 1895 or 1896 (purple with a white chevron).

To avoid this problem, Westminster’s original IBAC pattern has been restored, with the colors divided per bar.