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 an institution’s hood, but Bureau president Gardner Cotrell Leonard also used other heraldic devices to avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors. By 1902 one of the other heraldic divisions the IBAC used was a “zone” of color, which was how the IBAC described a horizontal bar. Like the chevron, the bar was approximately four to five inches in width and extended from one side of the hood lining to the other.

To avoid duplicating the hood lining already assigned to Princeton University in 1895 (orange with a black chevron), the Intercollegiate Bureau assigned West Virginia Wesleyan College a hood lining that was orange with a black “zone” no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. The Bureau may have assigned this hood lining in 1905 when the college’s first bachelor’s degrees were awarded. This arrangement of the West Virginia Wesleyan’s hood lining colors was repeated in IBAC lists from 1948 and 1972.

Likewise, in History of Academic Caps, Gowns and Hoods (National Academic Cap & Gown Co.: Philadelphia, 1940), West Virginia Wesleyan was said to have a hood lined with a zone of color, but no specific colors were cited.

Oddly, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as burnt orange with a black chevron, which was a duplication of the hood lining already assigned to Occidental College in California and an inaccurate description of West Virginia Wesleyan’s shade of orange. To avoid these problems the original IBAC hood lining assignment has been retained.