Not who you are replying to but I would expect any large organization (eg: almost every university and large research institute) to have a competent IT team tha

Not who you are replying to but I would expect any large organization (eg: almost every university and large research institute) to have a competent IT team that can help with most problems. I would not expect them to make patches to packages or the kernel and I do not know how IT works, but I suspect this is the reason they presumed what they presumed.