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. One of the heraldic divisions the Bureau employed 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.

The Intercollegiate Bureau assigned William Jewell College a hood lining that was cardinal with a black “zone” no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. This hood lining arrangement of the college’s colors was unchanged in subsequent Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume lists from 1948 and 1972. However, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described William Jewell’s hood lining as cardinal with a reversed black chevron, an erroneous citation that duplicated the hood lining the Intercollegiate Bureau had assigned to Whitworth University.