Around here, it seems like the students and staff prefer to wear the school colors (UW-Madison's colors are red and white). So you'll run into plenty of people on bikes wearing bright red, but riding a black bike. This seems pretty sensible to me. Stripping paint is a *serious* pain in the ass. And a repaint is more prone to chips and scratches. So if you can keep the original paint job, it's a good idea. It's just not worth going to all that trouble if the original paint job is in good shape.