The College Fix

If you have an identification card at the University of Oregon, it starts with the characters “95_.”

If you don’t have a clue how to craft intelligible marketing messages, you’ll design a social justice campaign that starts with “95_” and count on students to divine the meaning.

Daily Emerald columnist Billy Manggala talked to some students who weren’t impressed by the university’s mysterious “Reset the Code” campaign, which deployed the 95_ logo on “posters, banners and stickers” across campus the first week of the semester.

Here’s what it means, according to the UO’s official Reset the Code pledge page, though people with no UO affiliation can also sign the pledge:

At one point in our lives, we all learned to treat others as we would like to be treated. We promised to protect, respect and defend those around us against injustice. The purpose of Reset the Code is to remind us of these simple values, encourage us to live by them, to help create a kinder present and more civil future. Every one of us already knows how.

At the University of Oregon our 95 numbers unite us as a shared community; and together, our community can affect real change. Progress is most profound, most meaningful when we forge it as a united front.

Manggala said few students had any clue what the signs were about, in his experience:

Jesus Bonilla, an Economics major at the University of Oregon, was one of those students who wasn’t convinced by the campaign’s promotion and believed that Reset the Code was an advertisement that was disconnected from the university.

“It almost felt like I was attacked by ads,” Bonilla said, believing that the university’s strong support for businesses was the reason for the ads. “I bet a lot of people on campus heard of Reset the Code, but don’t know what it is.”

Sure enough, there are plenty of commercial opportunities from Reset the Code.

More from Manggala’s column:

Kiana York, a Human Physiology major, was well aware that the 95_ was about her and every student, but wasn’t aware of its message until she read one of the banners carefully.

“I didn’t completely understand the signs, but I knew it was something about respecting others,” York said. “It felt like it was trying to support diversity.”

A student with a disability was more blunt, leaving a sarcastic comment on the campaign’s Facebook page about the disconnect between its “hot air” and ongoing accessibility issues on campus.

This is what showed up on a banner across from the student union building, according to the Daily Emerald:

When did watching and doing nothing become normal? What happened to our standard of reciprocal respect? It seems we are lost in a mire of ‘mine’ and not ‘ours.’ Sides taken, safety shaken, hate spewed like litter on the ground. No more. It’s time to stand ours, and revert to the common human core. Bond together and refuse this new mode.

If you can sit through three minutes of “discussion of discriminatory attitudes and actions,” watch this melodramatic Reset the Code video.

Trigger warning: snowflakes.

Read Manggala’s column, the original report on Reset the Code, and its Facebook page.

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