I've taken over the GCI task for this and it turns out it is not an "easy" task, as it seems that this is problem is coded into the actual editor - you can see this from other templates.
The asterisk appears because in the template, "cite web", the textbox has the field "required" set to "true" (which is obviously needed), but the the Visual Editor code makes the asterisk appear in both areas (title and textbox). I will see if I can contact an admin to fix this, because I don't believe I have the permissions to change this, but if I do, then I will continue.