Color on ZAFT uniforms

I watched ep 20 again and saw the photo when Shinn and rest graduated.
One thing got my interested. Why is Meyrin uniform Orange?

Thought it went like this:
Green: Common Soldier/MS pilot
Olive: Terrestrial soldier
Red: Elite soldier/MS pilot, these "elites" are presumably graduates with top marks from ZAFT's training academy.
Black: Junior Officer
White: Command-level Officer
Purple: General/Member of the PLANT Supreme Council/FAITH operative (with FAITH emblem)

Perhaps it was discussed in the ep disscussion of the ep but its gone now so any ide why?
Green wasn't fashionable enough? She wears green uniform in seed otherwise.

She seems young. Maybe something to do with early graduation, or her age?

I am guessing there is no real reason. Maybe it's because she's female? (In the shot just before it, Luna is shown with an orange uniform... however in that one, Rey & Shinn wears green).
At first I was going to guess that it's because she's on bridge control or something, but that would be weird given that Luna had an orange uniform too as I just stated.

On a separate note, seeing ep 20 again made me sad, because I remembered that Todoka was the one to help Shinn when he was in his most critical moment yet ironically Shinn ended up killing him. Damn. Also, am I the only one who gets a bit.. ehh.. "giddy", seeing pictures of the cast when they graduated? Gives a sensation of "the good old days". I don't know [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]

the todoka stuff was great really, storywise ofcourse, i think it really made an impact on some peeps, regarding the story and such

The male trainees wear green and females wear orange.

At around 18:00~02 You'll see them in trainee suits, at around 18:04 you'll see that Rey, Shinn and Lunamaria have graduated to the red division and Meryin is still in training.

On a side note: The OP post's ranking seems to be correct, but the only thing that confuses me is Dearka (Diacca?). He's an elite, so he wore a red coat in SEED, but now dawns a green coat in Destiny.

Was he the only person who got demoted lol?

That has been under discussion for quite some time, the most regular guess is that he got demoted because he sided with the enemy side during the last war (i.e end of Seed).

Either that or as someone else has mentioned, he and Yzak are such good buddies that Dearka would rather take a demotion to work for Yzak. Maybe he's Yzak's PA too? Regardless of the colour of the uniform though, Dearka still proves himself to be as good as an elite pilot.