To answer your question about other colleges, I'm a student at Penn State, and our policies are not nearly as extreme (at least currently). We don't have to install any sort of client on our computer (with the exception of the Cisco VPN client to use the WiFi), and, in their official policy at least, they say don't monitor the content you send/recieve, only the amount (we have a 4 gigabyte/week bandwidth limit in the dorm rooms, but it only counts off-campus traffic). They will call you into "Judicial Affairs" if they get a letter from the (RI/MP)AA, and if they detect a virus on your computer (I dunno how they do that, and it seems to go against their claim they don't scan content you send on the network), they require you to bring it in to be reformated, or forfeit dorm room Internet access, which I believe is a privacy violation. As far as the scanner goes, I recall reading about some sort of "install this scanner to access the network" program that only worked on Windows, so if they detected you were on Mac or Linux, you wouldn't have to install it. I dunno if your school is using the same program, but if they are, using a non-Windows operating system might keep your information more secure.
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They'll either already speak English for no good reason, or there will be an easily available universal translator to help out. Problem solved!!!
To answer your question about other colleges, I'm a student at Penn State, and our policies are not nearly as extreme (at least currently). We don't have to install any sort of client on our computer (with the exception of the Cisco VPN client to use the WiFi), and, in their official policy at least, they say don't monitor the content you send/recieve, only the amount (we have a 4 gigabyte/week bandwidth limit in the dorm rooms, but it only counts off-campus traffic). They will call you into "Judicial Affairs" if they get a letter from the (RI/MP)AA, and if they detect a virus on your computer (I dunno how they do that, and it seems to go against their claim they don't scan content you send on the network), they require you to bring it in to be reformated, or forfeit dorm room Internet access, which I believe is a privacy violation. As far as the scanner goes, I recall reading about some sort of "install this scanner to access the network" program that only worked on Windows, so if they detected you were on Mac or Linux, you wouldn't have to install it. I dunno if your school is using the same program, but if they are, using a non-Windows operating system might keep your information more secure.
Next thing you know, they're going to make microwaves illegal so I can't get up and make popcorn during the commercials.