Hi, I created an account the other evening and have been wniftyg for an opportunity to write the "hello world" for my profile and introduction so unfortunately, I have no info posted yet.  After noticing the topic, I see a chance to pitch in so I'll get to the About Me later.

A few neat things to look at:

• Peerblock is a nifty little application that helps weed out nonsense. Looked sketchy to me at first but it is worth a peek
• Hotspot Shield VPN has a college discount that is pretty nifty
• Running Utorrent on a VPS or in a virtual Linux distro
• Proxy chains can be quite nice

Your professor sounds like an ignorant prick.  Yes, the tracking things could be done but the resources necessary to do such a thing are generally not in enough surplus to warrant a college doing that unless they have a tiger team IT department.

If you need elaboration on any of the things, I'd be more than happy to help. OP, I love your tagline and understand the feeling.