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Orange cloth means "Open Dialogue"

A story says that "Shruti Chaganti, an undergraduate at James Madison University, loves to talk politics. But until recently most of her conversations with her peers were about “weekend escapades and drunk stories,” she said.
Now Chaganti wears a piece of orange cloth dangling from her backpack as a symbol that she will embrace all-comers who want serious discourse. “It isn’t that [other students] don’t have ideas about politics,” Chaganti said, “but that they either feel a social stigma or are scared and uncomfortable to talk about it with other people.”
Chaganti is one of thousands of students at James Madison who have donned orange bands as a symbol of their willingness to get down to brass tacks. Orange Band estimates that perhaps 8,000 of the ribbons have been given out.

- Inside Higher Education