Western Michigan University
Michigan
1903
Formerly “Western State Normal School”
Students at Western State Normal School were using brown and gold pennants and ribbons at athletic events in the spring of 1905. That summer, after brown-eyed Susan flowers had bloomed on campus, the secretary of Dwight Waldo, the school’s first president, suggested these would be perfect colors for Western State Normal, so Waldo made brown and gold the official colors of the college. The preferred shades of these colors were dark brown and bright gold (or yellow).
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1948 and 1972 described Western Michigan as having a hood lined brown with a gold chevron. The IBAC used “brown” to describe a dark shade of chocolate brown. Lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) described the college’s hood lining as seal brown with an old gold chevron. “Seal brown” is a good synonym for the Western Michigan’s dark brown, but “old gold” was an inaccurate way to describe the college’s bright gold chevron.