FYI I actually had really bad experiences with Groff, but I took him for 161, so 6 years ago. I was talking about Sealey's Ecology class.
i'm off-campus, but unless you're paying for the internet, but from my experience, you're going to have to weasel your way around, using non-standard ports. you will likely have to set up a proxy, and send it over smtp/pop if you only use webmail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat#Technical_information
http://www.mirc.com/proxies.html
what's the irc for? i've got an asus rt-n16 running tomato w. optware so i could potentially host an irc server if i had people to mod/admin.
EDIT: lol, you're running a client, not server. much of the information still stands. i would almost be willing to set up an IRC proxy, but i need to make sure i can lock that shit down.