Is this something that I should ask the firm to help me resolve/understand before I submit my paperwork? Yes. Most of the time these sorts of things are just

Is this something that I should ask the firm to help me resolve/understand before I submit my paperwork? Yes. Most of the time these sorts of things are just boilerplate CYA garbage. I highly doubt they want your dining hall ratings website. I don't doubt however that they want to ensure that you are primarily committed to their business interests above your own. If they stick on these terms, you'll probably also find that it's a shitty place to work and will be little fun, and offer little rewards as well. You should bring this up with them, and likely spin it that this site is a low-effort sort of hobby of yours, and is a good platform to enable you to stay sharp on new technologies and put different things into play in a live environment. They should understand that in the long run it is to everyone's benefit that you have this little self-learning side project/hobby thing going on. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure their "Code of ethics" blurb is basically unenforceable and pointless.