Wesleyan University
Connecticut
1831
Students at Wesleyan University selected cardinal and black as their new school colors in 1884. The university had been using lavender since at least 1868, according to a book of college songs entitled Carmina Collegensia by H.R. Waite.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): cardinal/black (1895-1935)
Wesleyan University was an early client of Cotrell & Leonard, according to “The Cap and Gown in America”, a May 1893 article in The University Magazine written by the Director of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), Gardner Cotrell Leonard, before the creation of the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume.
But according to the November 1900 Wesleyan University Bulletin, it wasn’t until 19 June 1900 that the Academic Council at Wesleyan adopted the Intercollegiate Code “in order to put Wesleyan University into accord with other collegiate institutions, and to relieve the embarrassment under which her officers and graduates have sometimes labored in the lack of any distinctly authorized costume upon formal occasions elsewhere when the wearing of academic costume is the rule”. The Council described the authorized hood as being lined with silk, and that “the color of the lining shall be cardinal, with a bend, or diagonal stripe, of black in each half of the hood, so as to give the effect of a chevron.”
An article entitled “Albany Bureau of Academic Costume” in the 27 July 1902 edition of The Argus, an Albany NY newspaper, contained a list of IBAC hood lining patterns that had been assigned to some of the more prestigious colleges and universities of the time. In that article Wesleyan University was stated to have a cardinal hood lining with a black chevron, a description consistent with the university’s regulation.
But by 1918 the IBAC had revised its description of Wesleyan’s hood lining to cardinal with a “wide chevron”. The standard chevron width was four to five inches, and a 1927 IBAC list stated that wide chevrons may be 5½ inches, six inches, or seven inches in width. No IBAC list defined the width of Wesleyan’s wide chevron, and it is not known why the IBAC changed Wesleyan’s chevron to a wide chevron. Washington and Jefferson College is later cited as having a cardinal hood lining with a black chevron; perhaps both schools had independently and inadvertently adopted identical hoods and the IBAC was trying to resolve that duplication.
By 1927 the IBAC had also changed the description of Wesleyan’s cardinal hood lining to “bright red”, which was normally how the IBAC described scarlet. Perhaps Wesleyan’s cardinal was now a brighter shade than typical. In any case the university’s bright red hood lining with wide black chevron remained unchanged in subsequent IBAC lists.
Here Wesleyan has been reassigned the original hood lining design authorized by the university’s Academic Council on 19 June 1900.