I don't find it a coincidence that univerties in the United States and England block IRC ports. Must be some International thing.
The Efnet java applet uses a 5000 port, and my university didn't block that. The wager is not IRC'ing at Efnet at all, or using a sucky java applet. I prefer to use mIRC all the way, so using their java applets is useful only in emergencies/in real time chats.
Neal C.