Western New Mexico University
New Mexico
1893
Formerly “New Mexico Normal School” and “New Mexico State Teachers College”
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.
Detailed historical information about the purple and gold school colors of New Mexico Normal School is not available at this time.
Intercollegiate Bureau lists from 1927, 1948, and 1972 stated that the hood lining of New Mexico Normal School and New Mexico State Teachers College was gold above purple. The heraldic division between the colors was not described, but because Elmira College had earlier been assigned the same hood lining pattern, divided per chevron, the division between the gold and purple in the hood lining of New Mexico Normal School was probably divided per reversed chevron.
However, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the hood lining of “New Mexico Western College” as purple with a gold chevron. Evidently the Intercollegiate Bureau was not aware that the New Mexico State Teachers College and Western New Mexico University were the same institution, because the IBAC list from 1972 contains two citations for the school: New Mexico State Teachers College (“gold over purple”) and Western New Mexico University (“purple with a gold chevron”). Here the original Intercollegiate Bureau hood lining assignment has been used.